Fall 2015 Panel Members
MARY BECELIA has lived and worked in the Fredericksburg area for over 20 years. She has written
for The Front Porch, The Free-Lance Star, and currently for Fredericksburg Parent and Family Magazine. She is working on her first novel and fills her remaining time with family, friends, organic gardening and occasional travel.
KC BOSCH is a photographer, woodworker, and poet living in Rappahannock County Virginia, his
home and inspiration for the last two decades. He spends his time making new things and fixing old
ones. His poetry can be found at Camel Saloon, Poetry Breakfast, Dead Mule, and vox poetica. His first
book, Stealing Days, was made possible by a Claudia Mitchell Fund grant through the Rappahannock
Association for Arts and Community, RAAC.
COURTENAY JONES holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Painting and Printmaking and has spent her adult life supporting and collecting art and inspiring her children’s creativity.
She is currently working with mixed media and Polaroid film.
DAVID LOVEGROVE is a member of Art First Gallery, Fredericksburg Center for Creative Arts
(FCCA), National Art Education Association, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Smithsonian
Institution. Lovegrove works by studying worn, broken, or deconstructed objects from the natural and
human-made world and sketching or photgraphing them. His finished pieces become metaphors for
universal ideas about the world, where he seeks to depict the formal and abstract qualities of objects
and places, but also shows them representing something beyond the surface. He is influenced by Kurt
Schwitters, Charles Sheeler, Gordon Matta-Clark, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud, Cubists artists, architecture and photography.
JENNA VILLFORTH VEAZEY has made her home in rural Virginia with her family, a stray cat, a
mess of chickens, bees and three large dogs. She is a member of Society of Children’s Book Writers and
Illustrators, and her poems for children have appeared in Baby Bug Magazine and Highlights Hello.
You can find her on her blog stirringsandstories.wordpress.com.

Water Street Studio Artists
A bird watcher for twenty years, ELIZABETH W. SEAVER began to recognize people she knew in the
facial expressions of her favorite birds. When she went to paint them, she changed their portraits in an act
of self preservation.
LYNETTE L. REED is a fine & fiber artist by day and a closet writer at all other times. She finds inspiration in nature and in odd and unusual places.
SUSAN CARTER MORGAN is a teacher, a poet, a letterpress printer, and an introvert. She wishes she
could draw and paint, and she’s given up on yoga. She’s hoping meditation will stick.

i.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Dear Lovers of a Luscious World,
It’s been a joy to put this third edition of Frederickburg Literary and Art
Review together for you through Water Street Studio. This is an exciting time
for the magazine, as we are taking it forward with a new format and enhancing
our online presence. We’ve also added art submissions and profile interviews.
Fredericksburg is a jewel of a place, filled with art, music, and literary talent.
Our goal with this new format is to showcase our local creatives, but also to
bring fresh voices and faces from around Virginia to Fredericksburg. Let’s make
connections.
Take your time with this edition. Pick it up and ponder. Be transported. Let
the colors, the brushstrokes, and the composition of the artistry wash over you.
Consider the inspiration for these pieces. Get carried away. Above all, I hope it
sparks an exploration into your own creativity. Are you ready?
We’ll do it all again in Spring 2016.

Best always,

A.E. BAYNE is an educator, writer and visual artist living in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
She writes for Fredericksburg Front Porch Magazine, Fredericksburg Parent and Family
Magazine, and The Health Journal. Bayne’s photography has been featured in two shows,
Plastic Fantastic (2013) and The Contemporary Henna Designs of Shirley Donahue with
Photography by A.E. Bayne (2014). She is the Editor in Chief of Fredericksburg Literary
and Art Review. Visit her online at aebayne.com, Facebook and Twitter.

A Fredericksburg landscape artist reaches far beyond the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s boarders for
inspiration, awing us with a natural eye for compelling detail while modeling a disciplined approach to method and practice.

This conceptual artist and designer from Chrysler Museum of Art discusses
the influence of research and collaboration on artistry and use of glass.

iii.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Chris Jones, The Art and Business of Writing .... 57
Williamsburg, Virginia

Chris Jones makes mentoring his business with his new Podcast and book
designed to help writers make a living while practicing their craft.

Wilson Hughes Gallery, Contemporary Art ........ 63
Roanoke, Virginia

A California couple relocates to bring contemporary fine arts and a spirit of
community to Roanokeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s revitalized art district.

Barbara Kenny, A Transcendance of Place ........... 77
Frederick, Maryland

A former Fredericksburg resident continues her prolific practice from afar,
finding transcendance in her oils and brushes.

Fredericksburg Literary and Art Submissions
All artists and writers represented in this edition are listed
alphabetically with their respective page numbers in the index
on Page 135.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

iv.

ELIZABETH SEAVER
acrylic and printmaking
36 x 36

No, I am Not a Pigeon

1

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

River Rising
The river came out of its banks last week.
When it settled back into a pattern of gentle swirls, it left behind
the smell of mud and rotting things.
It stirred a memory, close to the surface,
like debris floating by in the current.
Death in another river. In another time.
No amount of washing takes away the smell.
But life pushes the memory back down,
under the water,
into the mud,
until the river rises again.
~ Lynette Reed

Escape
She breathes in early dawn.
There's a stillness when two people
share space alone. No children scamper,
no dogs pant or bark. She breathes again.
The clock measures seconds until another hour
reminds her to rise, move, participate in the day.
But quiet seeps under door jams.
She listens, waiting, lifting her polished toe
against the cool sheet.
Voices float through the open window,
her eyelids flutter and close.
She writes verse, line by line,
breathing words in and out.
Adrift in goodbyes,
burned bread,
that death.
They are all words on her page.
Rolling to the right, she tucks
the pale blue pillow under her cheek.
No, she will not participate in this day.
~ Susan Carter Morgan

Water Street Studio Artists

2

routine. That fall they both started preschool and
we’d meet up at least one morning and grab a coffee
while they learned, I don’t know, coloring and animals and socialization.

EVIE

ia

y Becel

By Mar

Evie was my best friend. We met seven years ago, at
Moms and Tots library story hour. Total waste of
time, except it got Madison and me out the door
twice a month. Maddie was a handful back then,
and she was a mess at the library. Didn’t want to sit
still, didn’t want to look at the pictures, and definitely didn’t want to repeat the words to Jamberry,
like the other kids. I spent most of every hour feeding her Goldfish to keep her on my lap.
One day, after story time, Evie came up to me while
I was trying to shove Maddie into her stroller.
“Hey,” she said, “Do you want to walk around? It’s
such a pretty day; I thought I’d take Sophie up and
down Main Street a few times.”
I got Maddie buckled in, handed her a sippy of apple
juice cut with water and took a swig from my own
water bottle.
“Sure.” I said. I didn’t have any plans to get us from
story hour to lunch time and it was still a good three
hours til Maddie’s nap, if she even took one. Walking around, chatting with another mom; it sounded
like a good way to kill the time.
That was how we started. We walked until both girls
fell asleep in their strollers, and it became a regular
3

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Evie was gorgeous. She looked like she’d never
been pregnant, let alone had a baby. You know,
like those models that are all tall and thin and have
abs, even after popping out two kids. That was her.
Meanwhile I had the same old saggy reminder of my
C-section and mostly wore yoga pants, even though
it’d been three years since I was pregnant with Maddie. I told myself that after I had the second baby I’d
get in shape.
You’d think maybe I would have hated Evie, with
her being so perfect, but she was also really sweet.
We celebrated birthdays (ours and the girls) and
when Evie got pregnant with Meredith, I threw her
baby shower. My second never came along. I got
tested; it turns out my hormones were whacked. I
was like a 45 year old in a 32 year-old-body. Nice,
huh?
Point is, there was Evie, with two amazing girls, and
me with one not-so amazing daughter. I kept on
waiting for one of her kids to hit a rough spot but it
never happened. Sophie: plays violin, is in the gifted
program at school, and an ace Girl Scout. Meredith:
also in the gifted program, and a star soccer player
on the U8 league. I’ve been to a few of her games.
That kid can kick.
As for rough spots, Maddie, or Madison as she now
insists everyone call her, seems to have hit all of
them. She already has acne: in fifth grade! She’s
not in the gifted program. In fact, she’s neeed extra
tutoring for math since first grade. And she hated
Brownies. She never even got to Girl Scouts. I love
her to death, don’t get me wrong, but she’s never
been an easy child.
So how could I stand Evie, with these amazing kids?

The thing is, she didn’t brag. She’d work in some
mentions, sure, but then she’d downplay, like,
“Sophie won a violin competition, but she sasses me
when I tell her to practice!” (That’s hard to believe,
but whatever). And Meredith, “She’s working on another short story. I wish she’d finish one instead of
always coming up with new ideas.” (My prediction?
That girl will grow up to be the next Dork Diaries
millionaire).
Even so, things were okay for a long time. Maddie
and Sophie still liked to play, and I could take Evie
in small doses. We did more drop off play dates as
the girls got older, and once I started back to work
our contact slowed down. But I still saw her updates
on Facebook, with that same sort of fake modesty:
Meredith was in a school play, or Sophie won a
science fair ribbon. It started to irk me more. A lot
more. Especially since things were going to shit on
my end. Maddie doing worse in school; my motherin-law having major health problems and moving
in with us. I basically lost contact with everyone for
a while, aside from what I saw when I had a minute
for Facebook.
Like the pink ribbons that I finally noticed on Evie’s
page. I scrolled back a few weeks. How had I missed
it? She had breast cancer. Chemo coming up. She
called a couple of times, left messages. I almost
called her back. I meant to do it. Almost sent her a
text. Almost dropped off a meal. But…you know…
my mother-in-law was so much work with all her
doctor appointments and now she’s in adult diapers.
And Maddie started tutoring for reading on top of
the math. I was exhausted. Still am exhausted.

Plein aire
I tried to oil paint
but don’t have
the patience for this
slow process
of layering colors.
A Naples yellow sun,
reflecting rays off
a cobalt blue sea.
We sat watching
only last summer.
While glowing amber
pine needles simmer
beneath green umber trees
and burnt sienna sand.
Feeling very plain
before my easel, staring
into a lexicon of colors.
Wanting to call,
but there’s nothing
to say.
~ KC Bosch

Evie’s latest profile picture shows her bald. It’s not
a good look on her. But she’s still posting perky

updates about Sophie and Meredith. I saw her at

Safeway the other day; she was wearing a scarf and

leaning on her cart. I almost went over to say hi. But
instead I turned and headed for the bread aisle.

Panel Writers and Artists

4

A.E. BAYNE
Photography

Plastic Fantastic: Hearts Afire

5

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

A.E. BAYNE
Photography

Plastic Fantastic: Cold Heart

Panel Writers and Artists

6

Monkey’s Breath
I.
What does monkey’s breath smell like?
The answer occurred
Belatedly,
Eyes tear full.
My heart stopped.
My breath gone.
Silence suspended me.
Bananas.
II.
My small son
Dropped
From monkey bars
Elbow first.
His soccer-stopping shrieks filled the fields.
In the ambulance his face blued from gasping pain.
III.
Reset. Resetting. Not brain surgery.
Still I want to crawl onto the gurney with him.
Stroke the blonde down of his arm, past the IV tape.
But I stare at the wall TV instead, scared to scare him.
“What if I don’t wake up?”
The weight of his trust nearly drowns me.
I cling to the puff and click of the blood pressure cuff.
Before the mask goes on, he asks the anesthesiologist,
“What will it smell like?”
“Like monkey’s breath.”

I watch him leave like a prince on his palanquin.
My heart disappears down the hall along with him, another IV.
~ Jenna Veazey

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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Slipping Stitches
Fingers like bobbins
slide yarn from point to point –
slip, wrap, finger, draw through, repeat.
Quicker than the eye
her needles clack and scissor –
knit, purl, knit, purl, drop a stitch and carry to the back.
My hands on her hands, skin like iced tissue paper,
yarn moves the blood.
She moves my fingers,
needling them –
nudge the tip, hold it steady, wrap the yarn, pull through the loop.
We’ve moved the world.
Picking up speed: now a purse, some socks, mittens, silky scarves, a tam;
and now booties and a blanket for my boy, a jumper for my boy, a sweater for my boy.
Oh! The patterned textures that pass over two slender bodies,
stitches lost, yanked clean out at times,
then retrieved to rest with the others.
Even after thin fingers grow still,
after joints grow too stiff for needles,
her hands are my hands and in my hands, her hands, always.
~ A.E. Bayne

Panel Writers and Artists

8

DAVID LOVEGROVE
Photo transfer and caran dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ache

Lock and Key - Park Series III

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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

We’ve Done this Before
You can’t see them
from the top
but all military brats
know they are there.
On the back or the bottom
of every table,
sideboard or chair.
Small square tags of
blue or green
or orangish red.
Each with a number
and some code.
Inventory tags
I am told,
so the movers
don’t lose
your furniture.
I guess if they
could talk,
some pieces
would be proud
of all their stickers.
Like stamps
on a passport.
Those numbers,
the scratches,
the inevitable dents.
What you also
can’t see are the
marks on the kids
who followed that
furniture around.

~ KC Bosch

Panel Writers and Artists

10

On Giving
By Ashley Carpenter

W

e were never reliant on advent calendars.
In my family, you could tell that Christmas
was approaching based upon the contents of a
shopping cart at Giant Eagle. Canned pumpkin,
sweetened condensed milk, powdered sugar,
flour, brown sugar, chocolate chips, vanilla,
Hershey kisses and cinnamon filled the metal
carts as we awaited the coming of the Christ
child.
We rarely said, “I love you.” Instead, our love
was poured out onto my grandmother’s blue
enamel countertop, rolled and cut with snowflake and Christmas tree shaped cookie cutters.
It was baked, iced, sprinkled and arranged on
a festive tray, then wrapped in red and green
cellophane. My mother, my aunt, my grandmother, and myself assembled trays filled with
lady locks, fruit cups, chocolate chip cookies,
pumpkin bars, peanut butter blossoms, caramel
cups, and my great grandmother’s prized cut
out cookies. On a good year, we distributed no
less than 50 to our closest friends, neighbors,
and family. Even the mailman got his own
Christmas treat.

11

The process of mixing, baking, decorating,
and serving was in itself a catharsis. Giving
away everything we made seemed to be the only
way that we knew how to show that we loved
others.
Even now, my grandmother would rather
make me Rice Krispie treats or a piece of toast
instead of saying the words. I guess that the
women in my family feel like you can’t say love
without giving food. My mother and I rarely
talk, except for when I need a new recipe.
Earlier this week, I called and asked her how
to make my grandmother’s apple cake. She
described how much she loved it growing up,
the sweet cinnamon of the apples, the moist
cake. It was not unlike how someone else might
describe a warm, tender hug.
I can’t help but maintain this tradition.
When I want to show someone that I care for
them, I immediately bake something. A lemon
pound cake, cookies, or even an apple pie allow
me to show my affection without ever needing
to say the words. Perhaps it’s because the words

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

are complex. They’re full of connotations and
expectations. Maybe it’s just more effective to
follow words up with something concrete, so as
not to seem futile.
Now that I’m twenty-something and living
in another state I find myself trying to recreate the memories my family curated. It’s not
uncommon for me to bake all weekend, and
then distribute the goods at work on a Monday
morning. My baked good of choice has become
banana bread.
When I see a pile of mushy brown-spotted
bananas I see another opportunity to take care
of someone; a non-vulnerable way to show
them that I love them. If I don’t have time to
bake that week, I shove the no-longer-yellow
fruit into my freezer so that I might use
them on another day. On any given afternoon
if you were to look inside, you’d see at least six
bananas waiting to be transformed into bread.
Last night, after sharing a dinner with
friends, I decided to pull some of the frozen
bananas out of my freezer, combine them with
vanilla, butter, milk, flour, egg, and baking
powder.

A few days ago, former students wrote me

thank you notes describing how I helped them
become better writers and sometimes even

better people. The cards with misused forms

of “your” and elaborately decorated stationary
made me reach for a box of tissues as I sat
in a student’s desk reading over the sweet

words. It reminded me of how crucial it is to

tell someone that you care for them. Whether

you write a note, make an elaborate candlelit

dinner, buy someone who is lactose intolerant
a carton of almond milk, or actually use the
words, it means so much. I wonder why we

would rather stay silent instead of allowing

ourselves to be vulnerable. It’s not like there’s
a prize offered to the person with the greatest
sense of self preservation.

Today, as I serve each of my students a slice

of banana bread, I hope that they know how

important they are. I hope that they know they
are loved fiercely. Even more, as they prepare
to venture out into the “real world,” I hope

that they learn how share their love with others so that they might not live in fear of vul-

nerability. I hope so many things for them and

My best friend, Jody once said that when you

give you can’t expect anything in return. If

instead of saying all the words, I’ll cut a loaf of
bread and watch them eat.

you want something back, then you shouldn’t
give anything in the first place. Her lesson

on generosity has shaped my understanding of
loving on others. There are times that we

give love and it doesn’t come back in the way
that we thought it might. Other times, we
find it when we least expect it.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

12

N
I
K
K
I
Reknowned poet, activist, and educator Nikki Giovanni
has gained respect and recognition over the years as a
powerful voice for women and for African Americans in
contemporary times. In addition to numerous acknowledgements for the influence of her work, she has been
awarded 27 honorary degrees from colleges and universities, has received seven NAACP Image Awards for her
writing, has historical markers in Knoxville, Tennessee
and Lincoln Heights, Ohio to commemorate her early
life, and was named one of Oprah Winfreyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 25 living
legends. She resides in Blacksburg, Virginia where
she writes and teaches at Virginia Tech University.

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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

G
I
O
V
A
N
N
I

I first met Nikki Giovanni in 1992 when I enrolled in her creative writing and poetry class during my sophomore year at Tech. I remember
a slight, quick woman with close-cropped hair striding into the room
and sitting easily against the edge of the deaks. She dove into sharing
her love of words with us in a way I had never experienced to that point.
Throughout the class, she gave us supportive suggestions and creative
critique meant to encourage and strengthen our own voices. What did
we want to say to the world? What did we think was important? Little
did I realize then that hers would be a voice with a lasting influence on
my own writing life. Twenty-three years later, it is my delight to chat
with her, to thank her for her lasting example and to ask her how her
own experiences as a writer have changed over the years. ~ A.E. Bayne

First, I want to thank you for your
support of young writers. I know
you were an influence in my life
as a young student, and your voice
is one that I have carried with me
throughout my adult writing life,
as well. One thing I have noticed
about your voice is that in its spoken form, it is instantly recognizable. You have a very distinct
speaking voice. I am wondering
about your writing voice, though.
Life changes us, and over a lifetime of experiences and age, the
things you’ve gone through and
seen, and the recognition you’ve
gained through your writing and
activism, do you still identify with
that 20- or 30-something Nikki
from back in the day?

Thank you. Oh, I think that many
of my thoughts have changed, but I
think that the idea of pursuing what
I’m thinking and learning, and perhaps even what I’m knowing, is very
important to me, and I say that to
my students. You can’t be trapped
by who you were when you were
younger, but you also don’t want to
be in a state of denial. You want to
know what you said, but you want
to keep growing. If I would read my
own work,which I don’t do that

often, the one thing I would hope I
would do is learn from it, because I
think I’m a good writer and I think I
approach subject matter differently
from most. I think that should help
me, as well as anyone else, to learn
from what I have discovered.
You would listen to that younger self and still learn something
from her, you think?

I hope so; I really do.
Is there something you tap into
within yourself to help you retain
your true voice? How do you remain true to yourself?

I think the main thing that any writer wants to do it to push the envelope, to kind of take you to the next
level. That’s important. Writers
are not athletes, for example, but
one thing we learn from athletics
is you always go out and play your
best. If you do that - look at Roger
Federic, or look at Serena Williams,
who is 33 years old and is going
for a calendar year grand slam; it’s
wonderful. It says she plays well,
but then she kept learning how to
play better.

I remember sports being something you talked about in class.
It’s a big part of your life then?
Do a lot of your analogies, your
metaphors for your own life,
come from the sporting world?
Is this how you see yourself, by
identifying with athletes?

The two things I really love in life
are sports and cooking. I really
love food, and I’m a good cook.
I like to pursue the question: if
you have the ingredients, what
can you make? So those are
probably the two images you’re
going to see throughout my writing, from the beginning to right
now, and that’s fifty years or so.
I’m always looking at how do
you take it to the next level, as in
sports, or what other ingredient
can we add, as in cooking.
I was reminded, while watching some of your interviews, of
the literay argument between
Richard Wright and James
Baldwin over literature and
protest. I wonder if you feel
that way? Do you think literature should be an engine for
some kind of social progress or
change? Does it always have to
exist to some kind of end?

I think it does – not just literature. I think the media has an
impact. For the media to not admit that is unfair and unrealistic.
I think when people say, “Oh, I
just write because I wanted to
see what the story is like,” that’s
not true. We’re all a part of that
learning process of how society
moves forward. So, if everybody
is writing murder mysteries,
then people are going to start

Nikki Giovanni

14

thinking that’s the normal way to
behave. You can’t have a constant
diet of craziness and violence without having to pay the price for it.
Especially for kids; that’s what the
kids see, so they think that’s what
they should be doing. It’s not a
good idea. I think it’s really insane,
speaking of how society runs. It’s
easier to get a gun than to drive an
automobile. It just doesn’t make
sense.
Has that sense of urgency over
gun violence been heightened for
you since the shootings at Virginia Tech (in 2007)?

I think our situation at Virginia Tech
probably highlighted it, though nobody did anything about it. Everybody said, “Oh, goodness, how did
that happen?” And nobody did anything. So you have police officers
shooting unarmed teenagers and
unarmed people. You have people
saying, “How did that happen?”
Then you have crazy people - Mr.
Roof going into a church and shooting down nine people, and somebody else in Colorado going into a
theater shooting people down, and
nobody wants to do anything about
it. Well, it’s way past time that we
did something about it.
It does seem like a kind of collective amnesia. It’s very strange.

It is very strange. So, somebody
likes the fact that we’re shooting at
each other. Somebody powerful.
It brings me to an idea you touched
on from of one of your speeches. You said at Governor’s State
University in 2012 that people
should join the NAACP because
they need to create an opposition
to hatred. I found that statement
prophetic because that was 2012,
and here we are 2015 and we are
seeing hatred manifest every day.
I wonder, how do you think
15

literature and poetry can play
a role in opposition to hatred in
today’s society? I know that they
have in the past. Now that we’re
in this age of digital and visual
media, are literature and poetry
going to play as crucial a role in
the opposition to hatred as they
did in the past?

I think the arts are incredibly important to help people, especially
younger people, to look at the world
differently. The world we live in,
the world we are now living in, is
not the world we will continue to
live in. The world will change. The
question is, are we going to change
for the good, or for worse. How are
we going to change? Because that’s
the reality. When you were born… I
was laughing this morning because
something came up with the kids.
I said you came out of a woman,
one way or the other, doesn’t matter which; once you got out, either
by Cesarean or natural, that little
cord gets cut. What they usually
do is they hit you on your behind,
and because you don’t like being hit
you cry, so they whack you on your
behind and you cry, and that cry
is what brings air into your lungs,
and therefore you are going to live.
This is very important. You have
learned, though you can’t articulate
it, that you don’t like to be hit; that’s
the one thing that you’ve learned.
Two, you’ve learned that somebody
is going to take care of you. Whether it’s your birth mother or another
person, somebody will mother you,
or you will be dead. Somebody has
taken care of you. Mother is not
a noun; it’s a verb. Someone has
mothered you. That means someone has loved you. So the one thing
that we who write literature need
remind people of is that you are
loved. You’re already loved. No-

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

loved more than you, and nobody is
loved less than you, because love is
absolute.
That makes me think of young
people today, particularly the
Millennials, the 20-somethings
you have contact with at the college. I’ve interviewed a number
of Millennials over the years, and
something I admire about them
is their philosophy of collaboration. They are really not scared
to put their work out there and
allow people to take it and change
it or share it. I get caught up in
copyright and a sense of ownership, but part of me thinks that
this more collaborative approach
is a very enlightened way to look
at the world. To say I’m going
to make something and put it
out there and let others add to it
seems bold. What do you think
about these ideas of ownership
and sharing? Have you seen that
with your writing students in recent years?

I don’t do much with social media,
so I don’t know Twitter and other
things that come along. I think
it’s wonderful when people share.
I’m a Black American, so one of
the things we’ve done forever is we
share songs. We’ve always put our
songs out there. We don’t share our
poetry or our novels as much, but
it seems like that sharing, wanting
people to hear what you’re doing,
and then letting them make the
changes to make it work for them, I
think this is a good thing.
I do too, especially hearing people
from the Millennial generation
talking about it; it really makes a
lot of sense.

Good for them. I think it takes a
certain bravery to put your work
out there to let people embrace it,

and then make changes they need
to make and then to go on. I think
that’s very brave of this generation.
You said in one of your interviews
that at your age, you’ve “done
what you should do, and that the
rest of your life is open to the way
you want to live it.” Do you still
feel that way today? Is there more
you want to do with your voice?

I’m still learning. Look at you. I’ve
been here at Virginia Tech for 27
years or so, and having watched a
generation grow, I’m very proud of
that. I’m still learning. If I remember, what I was saying was in reference to my obligation to my family,
my son, my dog, etc. I’ve done the
things I’ve been obligated to do. I
think it’s nice now that I can have
a lot of fun. I don’t have to worry
about saving because I have a kid
who’s going to college; he’s been to
college. I don’t have to worry about
putting something away; the house
is paid for, and we’ve lived there
forever. That allows you to look at
your life very differently. If I say to
myself, gosh, it’s cold today, I think
I’ll go to Aruba. I can do that. You
own yourself in a way that’s different, because you’ve done what
you should do, you’ve done what
you had to do for the people you
loved and the people you created,
so your life belongs to you. I’m 72
years old, so I don’t have to answer
to anybody for the choices that I
make. I can make choices about my
life and people can like it or not. I’m
not running for office; I’m just enjoying the life I’m living and seeing
what I’m learning.
So do you see that changing your
writing at all? Is you writing different than when you had those
responsibilities toward other
people?

No, my writing is not going to be
any different, because the only
thing I have ever had to offer is the
honesty of my voice, which was an

honest voice, which is why I think
people can still read me and say,
“Oh, yeah, that makes sense.”
Sometimes, I’m actually outdated
because the equipment. When I
started writing people were still using typewriters, and then computers came in, so some of the equipment and some of the ways we look
at the world are different. Take airplanes: I was laughing about that
recently. There was a time that you
just couldn’t hop on a plane and go

anyplace, and now airplanes are ev
It’s really an interesting thing to live
in this world. My contribution to this
world and to myself is the honesty of
my voice, so my voice has remained
honest, but I now don’t have to worry
about taking care of things. I think
that’s nice. You know it’s like if I want
to I can eat chocolate for breakfast
every morning, I don’t have to fix a
balanced meal.

Nikki Giovanni

16

Has the physical act of writing
changed for you over the years?

No, and I think that is because I’m
a poet. I’m a night writer, so in the
afternoon, if I wouldn’t be talking
to you right now, more or less, I’d
probably be taking a nap. In the
daytime, especially if we had more
sun...there’s nothing like sitting in
your chair when the sun is coming through and you’re just getting warm. But I’m a night writer,
and so I remain. I think that the
nighttime is the right time, like Ray
Charles said. That is a habit that I
probably won’t break because it’s a
part of my routine. I don’t write every night. I don’t say, “Oh my goodness, it’s midnight, time to write.”
Does poetry allow people to pursue the happiness that’s so unique
to American philosophy.

I want to thank you for your time
and also for sharing your true
voice all these years. Are you currently working on anything new
you would like to share?

are going wrong you need something that says you’re doing okay.
I’m looking at that because I think
there’s a story there that needs to
be told.

I’m working on two things. Number
one, I’ve been interested in Aesop.
I did a book that I love called The
Grasshopper’s Song where the ants
were very cruel to the grasshopper,
so I had the grasshopper sue the
ants, because the grasshopper’s an
American and Americans sue. I’ve
also wondered why the rabbit (in Aesop) did not outrun the turtle. Aesop
said because he was being arrogant.
I’m not so sure, because it isn’t always about coming in first. Maybe
they’re friends, and maybe the turtle
had lost one of his kids or something,
or maybe people ran over his wife or
something; we all know when things

Second, I’m looking at why it is
that women don’t cry. I don’t
think that women cry, even
though you see those stories from
the 1920s where all the women
are crying. I don’t know anybody
that cries. I know that it has to be
an important part of your health.
Why is it that women don’t cry,
as I think we should? When you
cry, the first thing people say is,
“Oh, it’ll be okay, don’t cry.” But I
don’t think that’s a good response
to tears, because tears are a good
idea, and I think we need to find a
way to deal with that.

~September 2015

I think music has allowed people
this, when you talk about the pursuit of happiness, the American
creed is life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. Of course, in my generation the men used to say life, liberty and happiness of pursuit, and
we had to laugh. I think happiness
is important, and I think the Black
experience in America has really
honed that, because somehow or
another, despite what could look
like a terrible situation from the
outside, Black Americans created
dance, music, a style of dress, a cuisine, we found ways to say, no matter what, we’re going to be happy
with the life that we have. I think
that that’s a part of the Black American contribution to the American
situation.

All photos used with permission of Nikki Giovanni.
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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

CONNIE SNYDER LESTER
Watercolor

Into the Woods

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

18

Travel Plans
Another seasonal change.
Each year it gets colder.
We are running out of fuel.
The hunting is poor,
so there will be no meat,
fat, fur, to keep us warm.
Some say we should leave,
go south, where it is warm.
But vicious tribes dwell there
who do not live in peace,
who’ll kill us for intruding
on their hunting grounds.
My clan will stay
one more winter.
If we survive
perhaps we will go south
next year.

~ Gary Beck

Herd of Wild Horses in the British West Indies
Though calcified, even bone looks like velvet
through skin. Furred like moss or spider limbs,
the science of its structure—even now
simultaneously accumulating and being melted away—
delicate and arching, a mouth saying
“hard to comprehend.”
The mouth
is mine. Male spiders
understand music. Their boneless legs
pluck rhythms on webs. The ribs
of wild horses undulate, crescent-shaped
as they move through thick brush. Beneath
a mare’s heavy belly, hairs tremble
in the light, silken and fine.

~ Maria Mills

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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

W. JACK SAVAGE
Acrylic

Frontal Attack

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

20

W. JACK SAVAGE
Acrylic

A Night with the Homeless

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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

W. JACK SAVAGE
Acrylic

My Time in the Village

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

22

Mitch’s Motorcycle Salvage and Rebuild
By Jonathan Travelstead
I push my Suzuki by the fading red­-and­-white-­striped pole
and jangle through the front door of the repurposed barber shop, where,
in place of combs pickled in jars of green sterilant
and leather strops, and slender razors that unfold from pearled
black handles I see instead the butt­-filled piston heads of old dirt bikes
like hollowed­-out ends of leg bones. I see a long, mirrored wall
oiled with posters of angry women whose impossible tits prevent
my finding the choppers hidden behind them. The Formica counter,
too, is peppered with crushed Busch Light cans.
Beneath the veneer of beer and shop grease, a memory. Tonic
and shaving cream. High­-and-­tights from my mother
because she preferred her men squared away. I see her now in parts,
scattered through the rooms of my life as I move through them.
In a dusty half-­shell helmet butted in the corner triggering the plastic dome
she kneed, iced tea between her legs. Together we waited
on the back steps for my father’s return from his ten-­hour shift at UPS
before taking the Honda, me clasped around her,
around Ray Fosse Park. No wonder such love, or need
for two wheels and lesser­-known roads has passed to me.
An antique Norton lies sprawled around my feet— its history skittered
across the floor’s black and white linoleum bringing me back
to her dying. Emblem scabbed onto the dented, cherry tank.
Forks dismembered to calcified seals and springs. The removed seat, too,
exposes a wiring harness like nerves along the spinal cord.
All the screws, all the parts are here­even the smallest pieces
of the assemblies. Only a month has passed since the Goldwingers
and the entire Shawnee chapter of Women on Wheels
attended her funeral.
Mitch emerges from the back, sweeping aside a blue beach towel
nailed at the doorway’s mantel like freezer flaps. He has
a gleaming tray of ratchets, screwdrivers, and stainless medical tools
bought at auction before the city tore the hospital down. White apron,
clean, antiseptic of grease. He knows me, and he knows why
I varnished the jets, revving the needle to redline,

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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

dumping fuel in the oilcase. Shows me the operating table
mounted on the pneumatic barber’s stand, how the foot pumps it.
Tips my bike onto the burnished surface and I’m by her side again
reading the Velveteen Rabbit and tracing her forehead’s blue lines
while she talks her little girl talk the three years
doctors and drugs finished parting her out until release
from her body’s pieces. But Mitch knows also distraction’s mercy—
the salving effect of passing the tray. He describes for me
the tools’ shape and function as he calls for them. Pries
the cover of the oilcase as if trepanning an eggshell. Shaves
with a scalpel’s infinite precision bits of hardened gasket. I look
outside to a dog huffing steam into the window
like cigarette smoke screening my face. It’s difficult to breathe.
No steady hands could remove the black fluid from her lung’s
lobes, and mine never tried. I can’t breathe,
knowing the moment before she died was another moment
I throttled from death’s yeasty odor lingering there at her bedroom’s
crystal doorknob, screaming at ninety and downshifting
the last second before cresting Norman Hill where anything
above sixty launches you ass­-over­-teakettle into a cow pasture dotted
with bales of hay. I blink and something comes loose inside,
falls away like a plastic piece which has come off in a broken toy.
Only now the toy works. The screen clears and I see he has
reassembled the carburetor’s jets and floats back into a chamber of fire
and air. With a hiss the table is lowered. He adds gas and oil,
the manna of machinery. Mitch says I’ll get him later, claps my back
as I wheel it into sunlight, the street outside. Someone waves,
yells “Johnny boy!” and, rising into the light I am learning to see
is there, I thumb the ignition for every time she and I
fired up together. For everything in that moment’s
combustion of sound, everything whispered in exhaust.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

24

Kathleen Walsh
Portrait of a Painter

How does one become an artist? Is it innate, or is it influenced by oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life?
Fredericksburg, Virginia artist Kathleen Walsh has known two full careers prior to devoting herself
to painting. She traveled for many years with her husband in Africa and Europe, working as a nurse
and aid worker in developing nations. She then returned to the Washington, D.C. area to pursue a
career as a psychotherapist and worked overseas doing that for many years thereafter. It has only
been over the past ten years that Walsh has committed to a career as an artist. I sat down with her
at Hyperion Espresso one evening to get her take on beginning a career as an artist later in her life,
about the role of art in modern society, and about living a life with awareness of the artistic eye.

25

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Were you always involved with
art? Did it play a role in your life
while you were working overseas?

Painting is my third career. My
father had seven daughters, and
he sent us all to nursing school.
He was horrified that we would
become unemployed. I worked in
nursing for a long time. It served
me well, because I spent those
years in the developing world in
Africa and in old communist Europe before the wall fell. Then
things changed; terrorism became an issue. My husband and I
were living overseas. I knew how
to patch people up physically, but
I was lost as to how to speak to
people who had been targets of
terrorism, so I came back to the
states and studied psychotherapy and practiced that for some
years, largely overseas. By the
time I came back to the states, the
medical community had moved
into technology, and I was still
working in the third world. For
the psychotherapy community,
my resume was just too bizarre. I
tried working in Washington for a
while, but dreaded that commute.
I had been captivated by art and
artists of all genres throughout
my travels and decided to begin
studying art. I wanted to make a
big change, and I wanted to move
in the direction of beauty, having
lived so long in other places. It
worked! I work very hard at my
art. I’m totally focused. Once a
year I try to study with a master
artist. It’s full time work for me,
so it’s been very fun. I’m fortunate
to live in this area where there’s
so much beautiful landscape to be
near. This morning I went for a
run down by the river. Just
fantastic!

Such a varied experience must
influence you in many ways.
You note in your bio that when
painting you try to capture a
moment of time in a landscape,
or the feeling of that moment.

Yes, it’s a quote from Thomas
Merton, a Trappist monk and
Frenchman. He became a monk
at the Abbey at Gethsemani in
Kentucky and was a prolific writer. He called it the still point the point around which all things
turn, perhaps unnoticed to a passerby. That’s what I look for when I
paint, this timeless place. Unless
you look very long and are aware,
you might miss it.
Some things you note in the
writing on your webpage resonate with things I’ve seen recently. You say art offers time
for a painter to step out of the
rush of the day. It made me
think of an article I saw recently pondering whether people
have certain expectations from
art due to the fast pace of entertainment. They equate viewing
art to what should be a form of
entertainment. They seem to be
seeking out an instant thrill any
time they go a museum. Do people take time to view art today?
Do they know how?

We have a different world today,
and America is different than
many parts of the world in that we
are very technologically advanced.
I was just one year ago in Zambia
for a few months working, and I
spoke to a group of people who
were interested in libraries for
children. The point was to take
back screen time. Cellular devices came long before land lines to
some places, and cellular devices
are now by solar power available

in places where there never were
any landlines. It just transformed
with wonderful benefits many rural lives. But there’s also this issue with the idea of language and
literacy, the flow of the words, the
syntax, one’s own indigenous language, which is being lost to the
influx of the Western tradition of
words, and perhaps even as a second language. So, I thought it was
interesting in a place where there
are often not even paved roads,
that there was a concerted effort to
take back screen time for literacy.
I don’t see it here, but certainly our
library is packed every day and everyone loves a good book.
I’ve seen some rumbling about
that here in our American
schools. I’ve worked in education for 14 years. Yes there’s a
push for technology because you
want to equalize the playing field,
but I think educators are coming
to realize that it shouldn’t always
be about getting on a device and
that there are other ways to access information or ways to think
about things.

I used to talk to Dan Finnegan about
the students. He thought people came
to bring home one of his mugs because
every single bit of it is handcrafted with
attention, from the time that it’s a little
lump of clay to the time when he turns
it into a mug and it’s glazed and fired.
It takes hours of work to make one little
coffee mug. It’s almost a comfort, like
bringing home a stone from the beach.
You can hold it in your hand and know
that some other human being was connected to this piece. It’s quite lovely.
That reminds me of process.
When you are painting, mostly
your landscapes, do you have a
certain process?

Kathleen Walsh

26

Yes, I do. I have a process, which
has evolved over many failures,
but Rainer Maria Relke, the German poet, wrote that one must
look at a thing until it begins to
look back at one. This stuck in my
mind so that I remember it when
I walk amidst places that rather
speak to me, like the river, quite
obviously, or the hills, the landscapes. I set up camp for a while
and visit a spot until something
begins to invite me to notice it a
little more.
From there, I make sketches. I try
to figure out what it is I’m really
seeing. I go through all the pieces of the pie that make a painting. Where is the sun? Where is
the shadow? Where is the light?
Where will it be in a few hours? I
make light sketches to determine
where the light’s going to be in
that particular painting, because
where I begin will have changed
and all the shadows will have
moved by the time I am done. I
must determine that before I begin
to paint or it will become confused
and no longer crisp. Through the
sketches and black ink pen - value
sketches and detail sketches they
are called - I being to make the
sketches on my canvass and block
the painting in a precise way,
which is to say, I like to paint the
dark and translucent combination
of colors, then let that dry so it will
shine through the more opaque
colors that I lay on later. It gives a
little dimension to the art.
This was taught to me by an artist
name Makoto Fujimura, a great
Japanese American artist. His
work is all done with original pigments, stones that he hand crushes, and they are suspended in animal hide glue just as one

27

did in ancient times. It is the ancient technical Japanese method,
but he uses modern imagery of his
own creation. The tiny crystals of
the stone are suspended and light
reflects around them so there’s a little glow to his work. It’s quite spectacular. Just knowing that, I’m encouraged to paint that translucent
background to get that little light
reflection through my paintings.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

I recall reading about your studies with some master painters.
Fujimura is one of them. Who
are some of the others? Do you
have to travel to work with them?

Yes, I go wherever they are teaching. Jill Carver, she’s a fantastic
British landscape painter. I just
love painting with her. She’s filled
with energy. I studied with Lori

Rappahannock

30x40
oil on canvas

Putnam, another fantastic landscape painter. Sara Linda Poly,
she’s right in Easton, Maryland.
She’s a brilliant painter.
I’ve done work with different figure
painters. Jackie Saunders does the
human figure, which came quite
handy to me when I went to the Sahara Desert in Mauritania thinking
I would paint landscapes, and then
I discovered there were no land

scapes. That’s when figure became
my landscape. Many of my African
paintings are of figures – women
and children – which links for me
because that’s what I do my work
in when I’m working with various
NGOs; it’s always maternal and infant care issues.
How do you choose who you will
study with? Is it simply people
you admire?

Yes, I look for the artists whose
work I most admire. There’s something in that work that I need to
know more about; then I call, put
my name on a waiting list, wait and
go. I try to go once a year.
So you’ve been painting for about
ten years, a third career for you.
You have a space at LibertyTown
here in Fredericksburg. Do you
show other places?

Kathleen Walsh

28

Jan Williamsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Umbrella
12x12
oil on linen

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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

I love my space at LibertyTown,
and I’m glad to have it. I’m represented by two other galleries
permanently. One is the gallery
Flux in Ashland, VA - a fantastic,
beautiful gallery. They have most
of my major pieces. Another is
JarrettThor Fine Arts in Colonial Beach, which is a wacky little
town on the edge. Joyce and Carl
do a fantastic job promoting art
in that little corner. Other times I
exhibit as I can if there’s a call for
artists.
A couple of years ago I exhibited
my art with the Alexandria Symphony to accompany their music,
which was quite fun.
I’m a member of the Art in
Embassies Program; they have a
file of artists and have invited me
to show in many places. I have
paintings hanging in embassies in
different countries that stay there
for two or three years and then rotate back to me. A few just came
back from Reykjavik in Iceland;
a few just came back from Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia; there’re a few
in Nouakchott, Mauritania; a few
Kampala, Uganda; Quito, Ecuador; and Manila, The Philippines.
I just try to keep track of them.
I would imagine with your life
experience filled with travel
and interacting with different
people and cultures that you
have developed a philosophy
behind your art. It may be a bit
of a broad question, but do you
feel you have a philosophy of
painting?

It’s a good question, and I think
about it quite often. Having lived
as we have, my husband and I
often say we’ve had the most extraordinary life. I mean, it’s been
extremely difficult living in communist Europe where we were
the capitalists or imperialists,
or when living in very very dire
straits, or living where there was
hardship in Africa; it’s all been a
gift. It’s been gift after gift in the

kindness of strangers. I never
could have made my way without
these random acts of kindness as
they’re called. Now it seems that
it is only reasonable that we might
make sense of these gifts and present them as we can. This is what we
both try to do; we speak about some
of these wonderful times and places in a way that someone else might
understand and become engaged,
because there’s so much work to
do in our world it’s such an exciting place. We’d hope that everyone
would not mind packing everything
into a backpack and rumbling off
into the middle of nowhere to make
their way.
That’s pretty exceptional though.
Really, I don’t think there are a
lot of people who would do it.
You probably met a lot of people
who were doing it in your travels.
But the general population probably doesn’t move or look very far
from where they live.

Well it’s amazing once you get
there. I think we lived about 25
years overseas in different places,
and it’s filled with people who are
just so excited and excellent at their
work, and so filled with energy, especially young people who are brilliant in their fields. They have tons
of energy, they’re fluent in different
languages, and every single obstacle for them is a great challenge to
tackle that day. They are so exciting to work with. I love working
overseas with young people. It’s so
much fun.
Do you feel that with your art
you’re at least sharing with people who might not get out there.
They might be infused in some
way by that excitement you’ve
had over time?

It’s my hope. Even here in Fredericksburg, we have the most gorgeous river ever here: the Rappahannock; it makes our town. It’s the
light of our town. So, I paint the
river often, and when people see
my river paintings I hope they say
that’s a great river and what can I
do to make sure it stays a beautiful
place? Things like our forests - you
read about climate change, does it
exist, doesn’t it? What about water? Water usage, water rights?
What about California? Aquifers?
Globally, all of these are huge issues for generations to come, but
to see a landscape and say now that
is a beautiful peaceful place and realize it might be perhaps in jeopardy, maybe someone would begin to
think about participating in maintaining the stability of these beautiful spots.
With your love for the Rapphannock, I wonder if you are active
with Friends of the Rappahannock?

I donate a painting to them every
year for Riverfest, and we’ve just
been talking about it for this year.
It’s very fun. I’m a great fan of Bill
Micks; he’s one of my heroes.
You’ve mentioned your influences and some favorite artists with
whom you’ve enjoyed studying.
Do you have other artists that you
couldn’t study with, but are favorites for other reasons?

Oh, yes; it’s called the Small Works
Gallery at the National Gallery, in
the East Building (New York). Also,
the French Impressionists, and the
Spanish Impressionists of the same
time, are fall over dead to die for.
If I ever travel through Paris, I go
right through the museum doors
and sit there to soak it up. It’s like
talking to old friends, just a fantastic sense of place and time, very exciting, looking at the brushstrokes,
just…

Kathleen Walsh

30

The way you describe these
paintings, it makes me wonder
how you find yourself viewing
a painting? Because you paint,
do you have a certain way you
approach a painting when you
view it?

No, it’s as if you were going to buy
a painting. Suddenly something is
attracting you to it, and you think
what is it about this piece that
makes it so exciting? For me, it’s
a couple things. It’s the composition. Artists study the photographers, because without strong
composition in your painting you
just have a mash of stuff, but the
photographers are brilliant in
their composition. The FreeLance
Star photographers are fantastic,
by the way. So, composition; how
is the painting laid out? How are
the values laid on the painting?
The lightest lights and the darkest
darks and the inbetweens. Where
are they and how do they relate to
each other in the painting? The
use of the brushstroke: are they
fine; are they thick; is there an
under painting?
The more you look at paintings,
the more you’ll see that there
are similar kinds of structure
throughout all the ages that make
a great painting. If you paint a
great big mountain, and then
you paint a tree that looks like a
lollipop, you can’t even see the
mountain anymore because the
tree is misshapen. If you have
all of this visual imagery, how do
you get your eye to flow through
the painting? These are wonderful things to know and notice.
Whether it’s a small painting like
8x8, or a massive thing, it still has
to work.

31

How long do you find yourself
drawn into a painting when you
view? How long will you view a
painting if it really grabs you?

Oh, I can be there for quite a
while, so I hope there is a chair
so I can stay there and view it. I
would probably make some notes
about that painting, then walk
around and look at it again and
try to determine what it is about
that painting that so intrigues me.
If I’m fortunate enough that it’s
around here, I can visit it and it
becomes an old friend.
Can you recall a painting that
knocks you off your feet when
you see it?

Every time, some of Degas’ work
is just fantastic to me, because he
has layers of paint in there, layers
and layers and layers. There was
recently an exhibit of Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas in the National Gallery, and they actually
colluded. Her lines are horizontal, meaning she has horizontal
plane that goes through her work,
and his are diagonal. There was
one particular painting, Little Girl
in a Blue Armchair, where you
could see where he helped her
redesign the painting. He put in
a diagonal, where hers had been
horizontal. He moved the little
dog to a different position. He
changed the attitude of the child
reclining on the sofa. They’re
just fantastic extraordinary structures, and then you can see these
layers of painting that go through.
They’re just tremendous.
There are so many that I’d have
to sit and think about them for a
while. Makoto Fujimora’s works
are just brilliant; every one of
them I find to be spectacular.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

These are just very fun things.
Then, for instance, in the country
of Burkina Faso, which is near the
West Coast of Africa, when you
ask about the arts they will say
there are none. Then you see the
most magnificent water jugs. It’s
not considered an art; it’s considered utilitarian; however, it’s
extraordinarily handsome craftwork on the jugs.
Your insight is making me want
to go view some art. What’s
coming up for you this year?

I just opened a rather large exhibit at Gallery Flux this summer
in Ashland, and that will remain
as part of their permanent collection. It takes me about a year
to prepare. I’m just beginning
to think of what I’m going to do
for next year. Some of it will depend on whether I travel from
one place or another long enough
to comprise or create a body of
work. For the moment, I’m painting landscapes in town at the river
and in the fields, and then in the
winter I repaint my smaller pieces
into large gallery pieces in the studio. That’s how I spend my time,
so it’s very exciting. I always wonder myself what’s going to evolve.
Do you have any final words of
advice to people who might enjoy creating or viewing art?

I encourage people to look at art,
to think about art, to talk to artists, and to try to understand what
are they doing and why. Even
if you’re commuting, you can
make time for art. Some of my
more interesting paintings came
from commuting in the middle of
the night on the train up to D.C.
When the sun just comes up over
the creeks, it’s spectacular stuff.
Just be aware. Why not pay attention?

~September 2015

About the Cover Image

Kathleen Walshâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s watercolor was chosen as our
cover image for the fall edition of Fredericksburg
Literary and Art Review. It represents her work
with figures during her time in Africa.
Sketch done on the the road
Ouagadougou
8x10
Watercolor on paper

Thinking of Florence N.
Picking the shrapnel out of his back
she remembered her mother's best china
shattered in their Persian carpet.
"Be careful, so careful",
was the warning in her head then,
fingers moving in grooves as scalpel-precise.
The colors of this soldier's textures
erupts more vividly with his flesh
aromatic as char.
Suffering for suffrage,
they forced her to drink some similar sludge once,
not caring if the tube found a lung
or punctured her spirit while stomach's fire
regurgitated ash.
She'd have to be stronger to win freedom
but a World War exploded amid those protests for votes.
Schooled in stoic usefulness, unsexed at last,
the front's casualties tallied her talent at cost----piecemeal, each amputation, this leg, that arm.
Her current boy is out of the trench-broth
and re-patched like a vase
in the kiln of her hands.
Her mouth still tastes cinders though
for every creation the Great Potter lost.
~Stephen Mead

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

32

Time Passes Like Oil

from Kafka’s letter to Max Brod, “Are we once more to play the game
of the unhappy childhood?” Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family,
& Editors, p. 81-83.

Another vacation away from Prague,
the ball games and card games and sitting around and lying in the garden,
he writes to Max.
To date only fragments of the ill-formed oeuvre.
There is no title, no circling back.
The mystery of the hour, the days away from home
dissipate in grass and flowers spun from the sun,
which also looks straight ahead
even as it sets above a faraway sea.
He holds the delicate stem of a glass of liqueur.
Sips crème de menthe,
places another bad hand face down.
When will the aces come to light?
What of the diamond, redder than Mars,
on no one’s finger? How
penetrate melancholy other than by listening to the bird
who comes to splash water from the bath
in an ornate dance of cleansing?
He can only keep the unmanageable at bay
by holding the boundary between silence and mimicry.
On the manicured lawn no woman walks into his trap, no girl
young enough to overlook his adolescent flirtation,
to go along with a plot that ends in letters.
He has dissected and analyzed the past,
written in a hand as fine
as the spider’s net,
its artful up and down and back and forth.
Anchor, pivot, trap, set.
Another day given order by a conclusion
shared with his audience of one.
For him the past provides not so much refrain
as script, pages of secrets thick with memory, fear, innuendo.
Two weeks away from home
with little to show for it, even at his best time—
after 8 in the evening
when he greases the old, unhappy childhood.
~ Judith Skillman
33

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

WILLIAM C. CRAWFORD
Photography

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

34

The Deer in the Headlights

Two
by
Tom C
onway

I spent my days in a dreamlike haze,
Staring out the window, a boy in a maze
With no more idea where I should be headed
Than a needle knows its purpose before being threaded.
They told me the future was lurking out there,
In the heart of that maze, hiding somewhere
That it would attack me if I didn’t take care
But I didn’t listen. I didn’t dare.
It was better to believe there was no future there.
Then it came and it got me, and I was so unprepared
That the future ran over me.
No one was spared.
Not one of the people who were there as I grew
Avoided the monster. The warnings were true!
A few, they escaped for a time and stood ready
To deal with a future that was always unsteady
But one by one all of them later did fall
The future was ruthless; it devoured them all.
And now I stand before you, withered and gray
Knowing that I’m seeing the end of my days,
And the future has used me and tossed me aside,
And is honed in on you.
It’s too late to hide.

Yet Another Goodbye
It’s hard to think it’s temporary
Life is odd that way,
But everything comes and stays awhile
And then it goes away.
“Time won’t go by fast enough,”
My students all complain
But soon the day is over
And as the buses pull away
I think of all I should have said
And what I should have done
And I worry what will come of them,
Each and every one.
For me, I cannot stomach time
The hours and days fly by
And everyone who touches me
At some point says goodbye.
I do my best to stand in place,
To keep the ground beneath my toes
But the waves wash in and the tide goes out
And in the end I stand here
All alone.
It’s hard to think it’s temporary
Life is odd that way,
But everything comes and stays awhile,
And then it goes away.

35

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

History Lessons
I cross to avoid
hearing more of your troubles,
how this world persecutes
with biting indifference,
ignoring your many medications
for stiff joints and rashes.
You rail on, molten lava
from under heavy eyelids
through a rasping wheeze,
a birdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s caw and cackle,
your words forming
inescapable circles.
This hospitalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s soundtrack
is pleasantly unnerving,
sweet tunes hiding horrors.
I sit bedside and ponder
old couples and friends;
what you say shocks me into silence.
I cannot predict your mood swings,
the acrimony of your tone.
Words as weapons plunder and raze
as afternoon light dims.
It would not surprise me
to see you howling at the full moon.
~ Gary Glauber

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

36

No Season for the Old

Jeffer’s Hawk

This is no season for the old
or even the old at heart.
Better they should stay
shut up in winter,
covered by an afghan,
gazing through the window
at the grey slate sky.
Better they should be spared
the brilliant blues, the first greens,
the tulip tree catching fire,
the April rains dousing the flames,
the petals crushed underfoot
like limp desires.

there he is, flying coldly aloof
high over his range, narrow white
surf against the cliffs, coast road
empty this early, he hunts soaring
on drafts far above wooden barns,
stone houses, ignores the horses,
deer; small rabbits creep furtively
under the chaparral, alert,
the mice too, seldom seen
he notices them a thousand feet up,
claws ready, wings perfect to drop
silently, pierce flesh and rise,
his mode a mystery to the youths
watching in the stony fields,
the world beyond his sea an alien
land, whispers of climate change,
air warming, Great Basin pikas
dying at the tops of their peaks—
all those heedless warnings,
unlike a squirrel's dying cry below

They’ve viewed this film
so many times
they know the scenes by heart.
The Japanese beetles,
ignoring the bags you’ve hung,
devour the blossoms.
The fruit falls too early
and is consumed by jays.
A pileated woodpecker
bores holes in the bark
and ants rush in.
A fungus covers the leaves
with brown spots.
The August sun broils them
to a crisp.
Acorns rain upon the roof
like volleys of hail.
What is not dead by autumn
is barely hanging on.
What is the use,
they sigh to themselves,
of beginning all over again,
only to experience
the same disappointments?
Leave that to the young.
They have more heart for it.

~ Art Heifetz

37

~ Emily Strauss

In My Garden
Bleeding hearts of crimson
dangle from a silk thread of magenta
A tear of milky white streaked with
dandelion yellow hangs from each heart
Bearing witness that long endured pain of
winter has been broken
Time fades bleeding hearts into pale fuchsia
white turns gray; crusty pollen dulls to cream
Hearts remain suspended in a row,
sharing the same delicate strands
~ Teresa Mohme

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

3

Sou’Memphis 3

BY

PowPowPow

R.A. A

peek around

LLEN

my window shade
dude layin

out in the street

Had I Known

I tell 911

theys 3 shots

While driving home

fired in my

last night

neighborhood

I realized your

911 say a car

passive-aggressive

on the way

little smile

I say don’t

had wanted me to stay.

be comin

to my house—

I’ve never stayed.

I’m anonymous.

But it’s obvious

I can’t stay away.
One of us

Too Clever by 1/3

is exploiting
my needs!

As the offspring of

a Napa Valley vintner

I therefore

we were dash personified,

previous nights

dispatch all

and an NFL cheerleader,

to the pluperfect

high and wide enough to

subjunctive.

command thrice our share
of elbow room amidst the

throngs in Grand Army Plaza.

Like glossy chunks

or at least Windsor-knotted,

we’ll feed

of anthracite,

Slicked-back and bow-tied,

coming nights

we held several honorary

into the furnace

degrees. We were surefooted

of our volcanic

in wingèd Louboutin high-tops

perfect.

and were blind certain that
the crosswalk signal would

obey our telekinetic command.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

38

Last Name of Sullivan
Some think it means I hold my liquor well,
kept neat, contained within my freckled skin.
My sisters say it means two full glasses
of wine will make our kin fall fast asleep.
My parents passed us all these traits at birth:
Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pound cake in our thighs and in our hips,
small hairs we have to pluck out from our chins
and on our heads, brunette locks that turn
the silver that our mother combs each day.
Our hands tell stories with dramatic pause-They know how many whisks go round the bowl.
Our sturdy arms know how to rototill,
know how to feed and when to rock and hold
our ten pound babes we push and birth and name.
~Haley Hendershot

39

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

The First Week

Social Security

The old white house with the unmown lawn,

On West Cary Street in Richmond,

the side of the bed with the green pillow,
West Seminary Avenue,

there is a graveyard for names
with white floor tiles like markers,

my permanent place has become.

engraved in scuffs of boots

I get ready for another day of living

and dented with high heels. Whimpering

two hours before his clock’s buzz.

babies are mourning my loss as

My permanent place has become

their mothers collect unemployment.

in front of the bottom left burner.

I call my father for his social before

Each night we cook, and dirty dishes
collect. Bananas rot in the bowl.

I bury his legacy in pages of paperwork.

Sunday night I take out the trash,

My new husband and I wait to see my number,

then I lay my head on the green pillow.

R26, show up on the blue TV screen.
My birth certificate is thin and

My permanent place has become

flimsy in my hands and I wonder how

the bedside without a night stand.
My early alarm wakes him daily

many times they sounded out each syllable

and everything old becomes new.

on the day I was born and if they
tasted the L’s on roof of their mouths.

The steps creak on my tiptoe journey
to the closet and bathroom as I dress.
The side of the bed with the green pillow,
My permanent place has become.

There was no oath or vow at the clerk’s desk-just the clack of keystrokes and a laser printer.
As we walked to the car, he clutched
my hand. My quiet tears looked out
the window. He grinned the whole way
home at who I was willing to become.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

40

Want to Attend CommonWealth Slam?

When: First Wednesdays
Time: 7:00 p.m. Workshop / 8:00 p.m. Show
Where: Central Rappahannock Regional Library
1201 Caroline St.
Fredericksburg, VA 22401
(540) 372-1144
Fee: Generally free; occasional fees apply when visiting
poets are running workshops or performing.
More information available at:
www.commonwealthslam.com
and on Facebook at CommonWealth Slam.
Robert Owens might be the person
who is most surprised by his development as a poet. Making his way
through Fairfax County schools,
he’d thought of poetry as dry and
academic, structured and somehow
designed to make the reader feel less
intelligent than the poet. He felt no
connection. It wasn’t until he was
22 years-old that he began to consider himself a writer. The advent
of Def Jam Poetry changed his outlook. Finally, he heard something
that sounded like his writing.

41

be assisting me to help me keep
going.”

Owens says, “Before Def Jam, I was
writing for myself; eventually I went
to Slam Richmond, and the slam
venue changed my life. The first
night I was there I was just lucky
to hear some very talented people.
It was at an art gallery downtown
Richmond. I might have written 25
poems over a couple of years span,
but since that night at Slam Richmond I’ve probably written 200. It
was very inspiring.”

While his own practice was evolving and his confidence was bolstered by acceptance and positive
feedback, Owens wanted to create
a space where other poets could
feel the same; however, he didn’t
want to create further competition for his friends in Richmond
who ran the slam circuit there. He
says, “There were so many places
in Richmond at that time, which
isn’t as true right now, and that
makes me a little sad. I just wanted to change people like I was
changed, to go have a place where
you could listen and belong.
That’s what I want to create, and
that’s a theme of my poetry, too.
Coming into places like Fredericksburg and doing poems about
equality and ending racism and
trying to reach people through
poetry, I know I’m able to change
things.”

Owens says slam gave him a way to
an unlimited way to express himself,
but self-doubt would slip in from
time to time. Even when he would
enter slams or go up as featured artist, he didn’t think he was doing it
right. He was encouraged to keep
going: “Every time there was something wrong, some doubt, something in the outer world seemed to

Fredericksburg was a logical
choice to Owens to start CommonWealth Slam for a number of reasons. The city is halfway between
the capital of the country and the
capital of the state, making it a
convenient place for the touring
artists to stop between the larger
cities. Owens says that’s crucial in

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

a business that pays $50 to $150
per performance, noting, “Some
venues try to market the events as
free; we never do free, because it’s
a hard enough business without
expecting people to come through
and perform for free. It’s tough,
but it’s really worthwhile.”
Owens says the most difficult
thing about slam poetry is probably the thing most people would
imagine. He elaborates, “I know a
lot of poets, myself included, who
feel like they read terribly. It’s a
learned skill, just like writing. It
can be tough.” He suggests listening to other slam poets on sites
like iTunes and SoundCloud for
inspiration.
Owens also suggests that poets
wishing to break into the slam
scene analyze their goals for what
they want to get out of being a
slam poet. He says, “Do you really just want to take your work
for the competition aspect? Do
you want to tour different places so you can see different styles
of writing? Do you want to be a
writer? Then consider that there
are different places with different
styles. At CommonWealth Slam,
we’re going to have a workshop
every week. We’re going to work
on the writing; we believe in the
writing.

There are places that don’t have
workshops that are strictly per
formance, places that only slam,
places that compete nationally,
places that only go locally and do
workshops with schools. Then
realize that, in the end, there’s no
such thing as a slam poet; there’s
just a poet who shares out loud.”
The workshops at CommonWealth
Slam usually follow some structure, including some prompt writing or work on techinique, such
as rhyme. If a featured performer
is coming through town, they will
lead the workshop before doing a
30-minute set. Owens describes
the group’s dynamic as diverse,
with both younger and older poets
attending.
Of slam poetry in general, Owens
says, “It’s a youth game nationwide. There are youth competitions all over. The Brave New
Voices Festival is huge, with fifty or
so cities and teams of four or five
poets each. Button Poetry out of
Minnesota filmed a lot of the poets
you can view online, and they were

there for CUPSI (College Unions
Poetry Slam Invitational). I got
to meet all sorts of people. It’s a
great scene.”
Owens describes the best slams
as diverse, offering a wide variety of backgrounds from poets
with different stories to tell. He
describes the poems as heavy,
but with an upbeat atmosphere:
“You have to keep it light, but the
more serious the subject matter, the better it is for the person sharing it. Sometimes you
get into a trap because you’re
just comparing scars for a score,
which is tough and your eally
can’t do it. I mean, there’s no
real way to score art, so the best
type of poetry slam is one where
people compete, but they don’t
compete to win; they compete
to be free, to have less burden.
Winning’s nice; we’ll definitely
take it. We’ll take all the wins
we can get, but the ideal slam, as
they say at nationals, is when the
point is not the points in poetry.
Now, when you’re at nationals
that’s hard to believe because it’s

a huge competition with people
from other countries; however,
that truly does make the best slam.”
The poets who attend CommonWealth Slam’s workshop seem to
get different things from the experience. Owens believes they enjoy
the writing, but also the freedom
of the space. He says, “I’ve found
that the freedom to speak here in
Fredericksburg with this group is
its most critical aspect. Our participants are actually excited to write
their experiences and not be worried about sharing whatever it is
they’ve had on their mind. I think
that is just helpful in life. It’s a way
to knock everything else behind
you, a way to get over. This group,
everyone who comes back is pretty
clear minded at that point.”
Owens thinks that people leave
the workshops feeling what they
are doing is important. He says,
“You have to believe what you are
writing down. Everything else falls
into place.”

Photos by Alex Alexander Photography, Washington, D.C.

Robert Owens/CommonWealth Slam

42

Having Floated Down on Wings
What was thought junk DNA has been found
To be differently encoded treasure.
Some strands are yellowing letters
Addrsses from past lives,
Aged correspondence in living history books.
We do not yet know which section of our cells
Tucked away our wings when cast out of heaven.
Some believe Adam and Eve had extra chromosomes
So first cousins split genes instead of genetic disease.
Does that mean an extra splice puts man closer to divinity?
Are those born with Down Syndrome nearer the source
Of which we are graven image?
My aunt is a being with a kitten heart;
She is eternal child And children have the fewest years
Since their souls occupied Throne Room.
This nearness to purity and inherent innocence
Shows in the smile she,
And others with Down Syndrome,
Tend to flash.
This grin is one that is hard to attain
In a world which requires resounding cynicism.
People who bear fanged sarcasm
and hold their own burden silent
Are referred to as “strong,” as “steel.”
Those whom fail to do so are eventually forgiven
As we all know that not everyone holds the same strength.
So why is it, that when a person we realize is capable
Makes a mistake, we do not embrace their error
As a requirement of humanity
Instead delivering a backhand
To the humane treatement of those around us
Calling the mistake maker “retarded”?
Ironically, ridicule is something that brings people
together...
Just always at the expense of the few. Of the weak.
But who is weak?

43

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

My Aunt is named Valarie
But her cross is called Valor.
She has been fighting twice as hard
To make it halfway
To the life expectancy of the average person.
My Aunt Valarie writes in tongues or maybe Aramaic.
This creative writing system uses notebooks as letterhead
To reach actors from mid-seventies television shows
For she maintains an infinite appreciation of imagination.
Glowing, she reads you her tomes in an effort
To show you how the two of you are equal.
And you are.
The checklist of shared accomplishments is long:
Employed? Check.
Imagination? Check.
Love? Check.
Kindness? Check.
Smile? Check.
Her nearness to holiness is not held over your head.
Your motor skills do not raise you above her.
Thought different in nature, we are all equal in life.
My Aunt Valarie has a simple life The kind many of us long for.
One where we can be honost and caring.
One where we can be like children:
Amazed at the simplest things;
Happy when near family;
Never insulting others out of hatred.
Of course, with hatred isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the only way to insult someone.
Indirectly, people degrade
and address others with a harmful phrase that means slow
Because they lack an additional piece of humanity,
Because they know nothing of my Auntâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wings.

~Robert Owens

Robert Owens/CommonWealth Slam

44

A RIVER BETWEEN US
By JAMES NOLL

Juanita winced as she reached into her pocket.

Her knuckles were bruised and scraped raw, and her
wrist felt sprained. Her other hand was wrapped up

in an old shirt, light red already bleeding through the
white. How deep did the cut go? If she went to the

hospital, would they make her report how she got it?

chimney looked whole. Except for the bricks missing

from the base. And the weeds growing out of the middle. And the top listing to the side.

A cat without a tail stumbled out of the bushes

Maybe not. She hadn’t been shot. She fished out the

with a meow and plopped itself down in the middle of

time it happened. 219 Woodson. Michael’s place.

old. Mottled fur. Sticks for legs. It set about trying to

address she’d scrawled on a sticky note after the last

The street he lived on was tucked away in a quiet

corner of the city, a few blocks from Kenmore Park.

The canal ran behind the house, slow and still in the

late August night. A mosquito buzzed next to her ear
as if to remind her of it and she slapped it away. The
moon was full, bathing everything in a clean, white

glow. Most of the houses were in fairly good shape,
but just as many were falling apart. Michael’s was

the worst. Blue paint peeled on nearly every surface.

Gutters hung at odd angles. A whole section of siding
on the bottom level was bare plywood, and the

45

plywood had a thin coat of mold on it. At least the

the street. It looked like it was about a thousand years
clean itself but kept on falling over. After a while it

gave up and lay down on its side, and Juanita thought
it might have died right before her eyes. Then it meowed again, short and pitiful. Juanita felt the bruise
under her eye. Her cheek bone felt like it was cracking beneath her fingers.

“I know how you feel, gatito,” she said.
“Gatito?”
She spun around, scared, but it was only Michael,
standing in his door. He had a beer in one hand, and
his knuckles were bleeding.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

“That there is Old Man. He’s been here longer than
me.” Juanita didn’t reply. Michael fiddled with the
screen door handle and it opened with a crack and
a whine. “Got any bags?”
“Just the clothes on my back. And five bucks.”

“Sure. Okay.”
He put the beer down on the counter and pointed at
her face.
“How about some ice for that?”
“No, its okay.”

“Five bucks?”

“Doesn’t look okay to me,” he said. He took a cup
from the drying rack and filled it from
the faucet.

“It was all I could hide.”
Michael stuck his head out and glanced up and
down the street. Juanita bit back her panic. He
knew the deal. What was he waiting for?

“I’m fine.”

“Okay,” he said. “Well, come on in, I guess.”

“Thanks.” She took a sip. “He just needs some time to
cool down. Sleep it off.”

“You call the police?” he asked, but didn’t even wait
for her to reply. “Of course you didn’t.

She expected it to be better inside. Paintings on the
walls. Michael’s pottery decorating every surface.
Carefully staged rooms. She was sorely disappointed. In fact, the inside of the house was in as much
disrepair as the outside. The hardwood floors
creaked. The fireplace was blackened with old soot.
The plaster walls were yellow with age. Michael
kicked broken picture frame out of the way as he
led her through the house. It was Michael and
Daniel’s wedding photograph. She could see
Michael’s face on the left, but Daniel’s was obscured by spiderwebbed cracks.
“Watch out for that,” Michael said, finishing his
beer.

“How many times have I heard that before?”
“Michael.”
“Five years. He’s had five years to ‘sleep it off.’ He’s
the most well-rested hombre in the city.”
“That’s not funny.”
“You’re right. It isn’t funny.”
He stared at her. She stared at the dingy tile.
“I know the last thing you need right now is another
angry man in your life, but I’m just sick of it, Nita.
Aren’t you? When’s the last time you painted anything?”

The kitchen was tiny and white. White cabinets,
white sink, white tiles. The appliances hadn’t
been upgraded in at least thirty years, and the refrigerator rattled and chugged like a dying jalopy.
Michael slapped it on the side and the chugging
stopped. He chucked the empty bottle in the
recycling and opened the fridge.

The question shocked her. Paint? Who could think
about painting? The question shocked her. Paint?
Who could think about painting? She didn’t even
knowwhere her brushes were, her oils. Michael read
her expression perfectly.

“Gotta show these appliances who’s boss,” he said.
Then he burped. He pulled out another bottle,
twisted the top off with a hiss, and took a swig.

“Okay. I’m sorry. I’m just so mad. Why won’t you get
as mad as I am?”

“Beer?”
“No thanks. How about some water?”
“Suit yourself.”

“That’s what I thought.”
“Please stop.”

Juanita didn’t know what to say. She wanted to try to
explain it. She wanted to make him understand, but
she was too tired, and everything hurt, and the only
thing she could think of was Old Man laying on his
side in the middle of the street.
Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

46

TIM SNYDER
Photography

Lauren
47

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Sue Hyon Bae

Cities & Microcosms
A generation ago, the city of Honran gave up enforcing zoning laws. Now its citizens take a perverse pleasure in creating confused neighborhoods, buildings of all trades. In the old financial district, kindergartners
on the fourteenth floor dare each other to brave the glass walls. With palms pressed against glass, they can
look into the opposite building: In one window, a caterer uses a three-liter blender to make squash purée,
which is delivered by elevator to the nursing home, next door to the plastic surgery clinic specializing in
jawlines. Hopeful lovers, on their way to visit the mute patients with jawbones newly shaven, stop at the old
fishmarket to buy bouquets of polyester flowers. When the children are gone for the day, the kindergarten
teachers take the stairs to the bar on the fifteenth floor. Gathered in a booth against the glass wall, they drink
German beer, eat complimentary squid, and watch the building across the street. In a ramen bar, the servers
stand in a semicircle for the daily motivational song; a pharmacist who has spent all day pulverizing tablets
for infants cleans her sticky face with wet wipes; art students sketch a plaster bust of Paracelsus.

The Pet Snail
The lettuce was too organic—along with dirt she washed out a snail, a spotted shell the size of a pinky nail,
almost translucent body. She tossed it down the drain and later thoughtlessly poured down boiling pasta water, but the next day the snail had struggled back up the drain and was nodding along the stainless steel. She
put it in an open plastic container and made space for it on a bookshelf to the mild disgust of her husband.
When the television was off, she could hear its microscopic mouth crunch lettuce. This was as satisfying as
seeing a dog or cat or child run across the yard toward her for dinner. It grew so big its droppings started
being noticeable. She fed it the fattest, crispiest leaves instead of wilted leftovers. She thought its tentacles
followed the movement of her fingers. Once it went missing; she found it under the bookcase, dried out to
half its size. When dropped back into its home with extra water, it squirmed back to life. As the weather grew
colder, she worried: would the house's heating be enough? Should she buy a heating lamp or would that be
too hot? Where did snails go in the winter? The snail kindly solved her dilemma—its body dissolved, leaving
an empty shell in a damp box.

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48

49

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Charlotte Potter is Playing with Fire
Charlotte Potter is a conceptual artist and designer originally from Vermont. Traditionally trained as
a glassblower, Potter has traveled extensively, working in glass studios nationwide including Pilchuck
Glass School, Haystack Mountain School of crafts, Penland School of Crafts and Wheaton Arts. In 2008,
she co-founded the Cirque de Verre, a performance glass troupe that has performed at numerous studios
and museums including the Toldeo Museum of Art and the Corning Museum of Glass. Potter has been an
artist in residence at Pilchuck Glass School, the art making Machine Studios, the Creative Glass Center of
America, and the University of Sydney and has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has
been shown internationally and is in the permanent collection of the American Museum of Glass and the
Henry j. Neils Frank Lloyd Wright house. Currently she is the Programming Director and Glass Studio
Manager at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. I spoke with her in September about
collaboration, inspiration, and research during the creative process.
Weight of Lost
Friendship, 2012.

“This series of hand engraved glass cameos features
those individuals that I am
not currently friends with on
Facebook. Some defriended, others leaving the social
network entirely, and some
simply lost. I collected this
detailed list over the years
and then created wearable
works that feature and honor this passing. The cameos
are set in sterling silver and
linked through collected
chains; some gifted antiques,
others store bought and
mass-produced. I am pairing
the ancient with the modern,
my old dear friends with the
mere acquaintances.”

examples one sees on your web-

through a kind of glassblowing
theatrical experience you offer.
What prompted you to begin performing with glass?

Glass is definitely one of those interesting mediums that you don’t
do by yourself, specifically glass
blowing, which is the process that
I initially sort of fell for. It’s very
physical, and you work with another person. There’s sort of an
intrinsic dance that is part of it.
Initially, I was less interested in the
final product. Honestly, I didn’t
even like a lot of the objects getting made, but the sheer process of
being around the heat and playing
with this molten material was what
enraptured me. Performance for
me is a way of prolonging that experience and that sort of magical
relationship that you have with it.
It also allows the public to see the
thing the reason that a lot of us fall
in love with the material.

pieces the group is creating get

The way I try to structure the public’s experience with glass here at
the Chrysler, which is in line with
my thesis and things I was thinking about back in grad school, is
that glass is an experience that with
practice can become an object. It’s
truly an experience the way that
music is an experience that can
become a CD, or a ballet is a performance that can become a video.
So, we attempt a monumental shift
in public thinking about art and
glass here at the Chrysler, and for
that reason it’s very much about the
process rather than the object.
It was surprising to me and so

different than what many people

consider when they think of glass
art.

Glass seems static, some-

thing to be displayed or hung.
Your performance reminds me of

the philosophy behind mandala
making.

Charlotte Potter

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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Charlotte Potter

52

Yes, exactly. It’s about this pursuit
and it’s about the journey. Not to
sound trite, but it’s about the process and the way you give attention
to that, the time and care. Over
time, I’ve learned to really appreciate the objects, and it’s really interesting how your aesthetic changes.
Initially, I didn’t like most of glass
I was studying, but the more you
get to be a nerd about things and
research them… I started to love
all kinds of weird forms of glassmaking that initially I don’t think
I would have been attracted to, but
because of the process itself I’ve become enamored with what comes
out of it. For me, it’s always been
about the process.
When you’re going through the
process, how many people are
you working with?

Specifically, for glassblowing, you
work with at least one other person;
people can work in teams of up to
five or six depending on how ambitious the object is that you are making. I usually work with two other
people. However, the majority of
the work that I’m most recognized
for is not hot glass at all; it’s the
Cameo series. The cameo work is
not hot shop; it’s all cold working.
That’s a great example of a process.
Because I fell in love with the process, now I love cameo glass, too. If
you had asked me about cameos ten
years ago I would have said it was
kind of old-fashioned.
So you love this hot shop process,
but you also have these largescale installations involving cold
technique. What is the difference
between the two processes for
you? Obviously, you enjoy doing
both.

Well, I think it leads me to these
two different conclusions. It’s very
53

much about research. There’s material research when you are in the hot
shop that leads to things like performance art, but conceptual research
where you’re reading and you’re
looking at other artists that leads to
some of the other work. All of my
work, and that would apply to my
performance work too, is very much
about trying to articulate these relationships and the space between self
and other and in such a basic way.
For example, you work with a partner in the hot shop, and there are so
many misunderstandings that can
happen. There’s a lot of nonverbal information that happens, a lot of cues
that people have to be aware to pick
up. I think that relationship was the
first impetus for me to do this whole
conceptual query about the way
that we relate to each other and the
world. So, bridging from that, which
started with material research and
just playing in the hot shop, now I’m
always looking for historical reasons
and references for using glass. Why
are you using this glass? You can’t
just use it because you think it’s cool;
there’s got to be an actual reason. I’ll
often look to other industries that
have come before me, like the medical or scientific fields that have used
glass for a long time, to help shape
my concepts behind using glass.
That’s what got me to the cameo
work. Cameo glass has been around
for a long time. I was thinking about
the way we relate to one another and
the world, and I started to recognize
that Facebook was this modern day
prosthesis for connection, so that’s
what led me to cameo design using
Facebook profile pictures – specifically with the notion about wanting
to connect to people. And if I really want to get philosophical here, all
the information that goes around
the world right now is going through
glass cables. So once again we’re getting connected through these social
networks that are relying on glass.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

How do you integrate glass
art into the community there
in Norfolk? Since a portion
of your belief about art stems
from public interaction, are
there projects in the works to
encourage the public to become involved?

I’m part of a huge effort to create a NEON Festival. Chrysler
Art Museum is located in the
middle of an arts district called
the NEON (New Energy with
Norfolk). I’m the co-founder of
this art festival that ran on October 15th and 16th of this year.
During the festival, we revealed
a $60,000 public arts project
that I’m doing with a couple of
other talented artists here at the
Chrysler. It’s sort of off-piece for
the rest of my artistic practice,
but very in line with research.
While developing the idea, we
tried to respond to the space.
There were concrete trucks in
the district pouring foundation
for new buildings - a lot of hustle and bustle - but it’s not very
arty yet. What we decided to do
is recreate a large-scale cement
mixer out of metal to scale, then
we’re installing a huge kaleidoscope inside which is about two
feet long and can rotate. People
put their head in one side and
the arts district outside is jumbled into this kaleidoscopic view.
So this becomes a project
where the public becomes a
collaborator in the process.

Right. What I really want to be
able to do with conceptual art is
make it accessible to the public;
that’s my whole goal. I try really
hard to deal with things that everyone understands and present
it from the very personal in the
hopes that it becomes universal
in understanding.

Pending, 2014.
Dimensions: 13’ x 30’ x 8’
Materials: hand engraved glass cameo, metal, images courtesy of Facebook
“I am interested in various levels of friendship, familiarity and intimacy that develop with online personas and
associations. In Pending I collected the profile pictures of each of my pending friend requests on Facebook. I then
hand engraved a small glass cameo portrait of each individual, meticulously cataloguing these online acquaintances. These personal pendants are arranged geographically to where the person lives, and protrudes from the
wall in direct proportion to how many mutual friends we share. This work is challenging the audience to re-conceptualize relationships in the digital age and consider the different thresholds of friendship in our lives.”

Family Tree , 2014
Dimensions: 62” x 3” x 35 1/2”
Materials: Hand engraved glass
cameos, brass, maple tree taps,
flameworked glass
“In considering the classic cameo
portrait of a loved one, my research
brought me to family trees and examining my own lineage. This work
depicts my family; our direct bloodlines and chosen families. The maple
taps act as a metaphor both to the
sticky sweet infusion that is family
and the place that will always be my
anchor to home. The kinfolk are connected via small chains binding us
and creating our inescapable web.”

Charlotte Potter

54

Memory of a Boy
By Sharanna Brown
They burned down the 7 Eleven next to the graffitied gas station on Foss Avenue.
A girl was caught with her mouth full behind the dumpster before two boys got killed there,
and the kids wouldn’t stop stealing the Slurpee’s and throwing the empty cups in the
parking lot.
The school around the corner, on Laview Street, shut down and the ice cream shop on the
corner never turns the closed sign around. The old-lady shop owner sits in the front window, watching the kids play and sometimes she sells penny cones, but most times she gives
them for free.
That is how I’d describe you, like the corner of Laview and Foss: free and costly,
everything and nothing.
You remind me of Beechraid stadium, without adequate seating, minus the concession
stands and with plenty more field space, full and empty, vast and suffocating.
I can’t even look at the abandoned cups, half scalded, half vibrant,
littered in the parking lot.
I keep trying to forget the way words got strangled in my throat, when you said—without
actually saying—that you were leaving me.
I remember the ancientness in your eyes. The sound of the rap song on the radio that told
you—without actually telling you—that I was sacrificial.
I was in love with you.
The way little girls love absentee fathers and on-layaway promises: faultlessly,
dangerously and without restraint.
But if I could make Forget Me Nots grow on the corner of Laview and Foss—
that is how you would look to me.

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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

WILLIAM C. CRAWFORD
Photography

To Those Who Sauntered in Late for Service
for Katherine Clark

My throat, today, is sore, Congregation,
and thus, the words I seduce from God,
for you, will not be delivered to most of you,
only the few will recognize the words.
The weepers in the back may need to turn
inward to find their provocations, or read.
You, in the front, with the cleanest shoes
can, as usual, just close your eyes.
If my borrowed voice does not sustain,
then I will yield control of the nave
and sanctuary space. The rest of you
will fill my absence with a holy melody.
No matter how the words arrive to you,
the collection plate should not leave empty.

~ Tom Holmes

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

56

www.chrisjonesink.com
Also on iTunes
001: Kinja Dixon on How Entrepreneurs Can Build
Expert Platforms by Writing Books
002: Christa Hines on Using Writing Communities
and Crowdsourcing Ideas to Write and Promote
Books
003: Tasha Fuller on How to Think and Act Like a
Book Publisher to Promote Your Books
004: Melody Robinette on Rejections, Reviews &
Writing YA Fiction
005: Stacia D. Kelly on Research, Reaching #1 on
Amazon, and Why You Need Beta Readers
006: Ray J. Pope on How to Pitch Radio Hosts
007: Efrem Graham on How to Be a Great
Journalist
008: Linda Clevenger Gets You Organized
009: Shawn Radcliffe on How to Succeed at
Freelance Writing
010: Sonja Wise on Branding Basics
011: Steph Heinatz on Storytelling & How to
Choose a PR Firm
012: Katie Humphrey on the Power of Fables
013: Kayla Thomas on Using Public Readings to
Sell More Books
014: Foundr Magazine’s Nathan Chan on How to
Start an Online Magazine
015: JV Crum III on Mindset, Focus & Being
Consistent
016: Kate Erickson on Fearlessly Building Your
Brand
017: NYT Bestselling Author John David Mann on
What It Takes to Get Published

57

Writer, editor, and entrepreneur: Chris Jones has done it all.

With
a formal background in graphic arts and a yen for writing, Jones first
sharpened his pencils in sports reporting at the Culpepper Star Explorer, where his stories quickly gained attention. The guy had voice! Jones
joined the Fauqier Democrat and then returned to graphic design for
a few years, running his own freelance studio. A proposal to develop,
write, and produce a little league baseball newspaper nudged him back
into writing professionally. Today, he is Editor-at-Large for Fredericksburg Parent and Family Magazine, and Editor in Chief for The Health
Journal out of Hampton, Virginia. He is host of The Art and Business of
Writing Podcast and has just published a book of the same name.
Jones has watched content writing change over the course of his career,
noting a shift to fit the time constraints and content overload that modern
readers face on a daily basis. He notes, “Writing has taken on so many
different forms over the years, but right now we’re in a content phase of
story telling. People want to hear stories again, which is fantastic, but in
digestible chunks. People want to be told stories fast due to having little
time. Media content has gone from long, 3000 word features to 600-700
word features. Some magazines even give you the synopsis before the
story. What media is doing is trying to hit every type of reader. They’re
trying to grab the one who wants to read but only has time to read the
short version, and they also want to reach the avid reader who will spend
time with whole story.”
Jones is actively involved with the integration of print and visual media,
relishing the challenge of creating compelling content ripe for contemporary readers to consume. He acknowledges the role of planning and
writing under the surface of audio and visual storytelling, saying, “I love
how writing, audio, and video stories are being merged digitally today.
It’s something we take advantage of at The Health Journal. We find a high
interst story; then we’ll do a video companion piece to enrich the written
content. It serves a dual purpose, too; if you don’t have time to read the
story, you can watch the video. Conversely, the video often engages the
audience so much that they make time to read the story.”

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

My goal for the Podcast and
book is for them to be a helpful tools for people who want
to live a writing life. Outside
of being excellent, my goal is to
use them as platforms for helping other writers, because that’s
a gap I noticed.
Photo by Allan Harvie

I’ve been part of a couple of different writing
groups, and one of the biggest gaps I noticed is
that writers can write, but that’s all they can do. I
can write, but I can also brand, market, and do PR.
Being able to bridge this gap is crucial knowledge.
In the short time that the Podcast has been running, I’ve had people contact me for additional
coaching, which is something I really want to do.
Being an editor, I naturally want to help people to
write. Being able to help people one-on-one with
their writing is why I do Podcasts.
The book is a companion to the Podcast. It’s an
expert platform piece to show people how the
process works. They can also use the book, which
takes them step-by-step into the writing life. It answers some big questions. How do you make the
time to write and develop your writing? How do
you take yourself seriously as a writer? How can
you develop affirmations? How do you coach all
the negative thoughts out of your head so you can
appreciate yourself as a writer ? It starts with that,
and then it proceeds to more technical aspects of
writing.
The book also covers the PR side of publishing.
How do you write a press release if you’re launching a book? Where do you send it? How do you
write a query letter if you want to be a freelance
writer? Where do you send that? In it I share
everything I’ve learned over the years to develop a
writing lifestyle.

The book discusses ways to develop an online
presence. Do you need social media? What do
you need for your website? What type of website should you have? How do you get hosting? Which type of hosting should you buy?
Which premiums are best? It gets into all the
aspects that most people neglect.

Chris Jones/The Art and Business of Writing

58

M

T A Y L O R
P A L A C I N O
Photography

Floating in the Forrest

e
n
o
h
p
e
s
r
Pe
to
n
e
d
i
a
M
r
Spea
Geri

Lipschultz
59

other, the spear you gave me, I turned
it into the first flower. It was like ice in my hands, Mother.
Cold as the last kiss I placed upon your lips. The handle
stuck like glaze to the palms of my hands, my fingers
digging into the iron ridge, grooves there, still wedged
in my fingertips now, many months later. Tried to hurl it
high, tried to throw it up, but in the end I buried it, and
the ground took it in deep, cutting part of my dress on
the way down, that undercoating of tulle and crinoline
the color of goldenrod, the netting slashed, a bloody yellow fraying, because, Mother, the spear took a small part
of my flesh. I wrenched myself free, and I walked away,
limping, bloodspotting my trail back.
Daily, I returned, the path of the womanchild-made
stream, a map for the daughter in mourning.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

book upon a round white table. Gliding from my mind
to the table, the light held itself suspended above the
book, and I picked up letters, put them together, as
pictures formed in motion behind my eyes. Your image
was formed, your hair in its plaits, your fingers slender and smooth around my waist. Your garment like a
rainbow, spilled ink, draping in folds, like those of the
saints. All that vanished with the sun.
Never will I forget you, Mother, but in the winter, when
the snows forbade it, there were times in the morning
when my mind let go of the spear. I dressed my wound,
as always, and I lit candles and I found the paints and
covered the walls with renderings of flowers I hoped
to see, along with renderings of you, what my lips and
fingers remembered of your face, what my eyes retained
of your wardrobe, and what had come to me in dreams.
When the snows melted, I watched the silver turned to
grey. From grey to that color of green that is indistinguishable from grey.

Because the sun pitied me, because my blood nourished it, a sunflower would rise up. A covenant made,
between you and me, unspoken, a covenant in earthen
terms, in terms of the age of bronze. My petticoat was
bronze, the sun was bronze, the flower would be bronze,
but Mother, your spear silvered as the days grew short. I
walked upon the hardening ground. I watched the trees
unburden themselves, and for a time, I trod through the
snow. I followed my map, counting the steps between the
darkening trunks, until flummoxed by the snowblanket,
I lost sight of your spear.
During the night, a visitation came to me, unearthly.
A blinking light positioned itself within a shaft, then
settled like a scope behind my eyes, blinking shades of
violet, then crimson, then blue. The light came accompanied by a house with a moving library within, an opened

How the earth cried! Such agony, I could hardly
bear it. You, my dear Mother, would have eyes only
for the blood, because it was unmistakably mine, once
yours. I knew you were softening. I knew you could
see that the bright color was slowly darkening, that I
was healing. You pleaded with the earth. I heard you in
my dreams. I kept bleeding until the bud was poised to
blossom.
I remember that day. That day I crawled to the
flower, my knees scraping against the beloved earth,
the pull of soil begging for more. That day the flower
called out to me. “Where are you?” spoken in my language, the old tongue you taught me, before the clashing of spears. It had not yet given up the spear, Mother.
I was still bleeding. You were there, I know it, in that
hushed mesh of languages, of the raining sky and the
besmirched earth. There you were, unseen, as always,
but pressed against my fingertips, my very lips shivering with the memory of ice.

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60

The Archer
I'm not sure of the steadiness of the archer's hand, who let me fly.
The trajectory of my life seems circuitous, with no target in sight.
If sin is to miss the mark,
have I then sinned if I don't know the mark I was targeted for?
Can I be blamed for having moved sinuously?
Or must I simply trust the archer's aim?
Perhaps an arrow's purpose can simply be flight.
Perhaps the mark is what lies beyond this life, returning home,
and this whole beautiful existence is simply the flight,
with no bull's-eye intended along the way.
How freeing would it be to know that the target is not here among my days on Earth,
but in returning home?
This life then, a flight through the physical, with the goal being to stay aloft,
to ride the winds without being blown far off course,
to hold on to as many of the feathers that make your flight true as you are able,
to keep your head and eyes lifted in order to maintain the arc of your flight.
Let fly my life, let fly my light.

61

End Measured Mile
Three words on a sign I had passed dozens of times,
but never seen before.
End measured mile.
Not only words,
not a statement,
a command,
one that my whole being felt.
In that moment a shift.
Just like that.
One moment everything was the same,
then three words seen in passing,
and nothing was the same.
Every cell rearranged.
End. Measured. Mile.
Every single mile I had measured to that point,
every comparison made,
every place where I told myself I fell short of the mark,
every one,
fell away.
End.
Begin.
What a relief, life without an odometer.
Nothing but open road.
A journey not to be measured,
but walked, run, danced, lived
with sorrow and joy immeasurable.
With each step unique,
what then to compare it to?
Unknowable distances yet to cover,
this one, alone in the woods, the only one that matters.
Until the next.
To end again where I began,
the only measure.
Two by Lynda Allen

TIM SNYDER
Photography

People of Nashville
#13

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62

Graffiti / Street Art
Wilson Huges Gallery
Roanoke, Virginia

John Wilson and Suzun Hughes left California eight years ago to find a
property in a art-centric mid-Atlantic city. Roanoke, Virginia beckoned.

63

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

On opening Wilson Hughes Gallery…
JOHN SAYS: We moved to Roanoke in 2007, with the
express purpose of finding a property in a commercial
strip in a small mid-Atlantic city. We found this property with a retail space, so we created a gallery there.
Roanoke was in the sweet spot of our property search.
What really convinced us to move to Roanoke, besides
the property, was the new art museum. I saw that it
was going to be a very innovative structure in a place I
didn’t expect it to happen. Roanoke has undergone a
transformation in the past three years. We have many
younger people living downtown. These are the people
who are going to buy art, as older clients tend to have
their collections established.
Sixty to seventy percent of the work in the gallery is
our own, but we are constantly looking for international artists we can bring to Roanoke. So far, we’ve had
artists from France, Slovakia, and Mexico show here.
They have been people we’ve made contact with at
some point in our lives, but we’re a small gallery and
don’t have the budget to bring people over. Ours is a
great starting-off point for a tour, though, and we can
supply them with a place to stay and gallery space while
they are here.

On what makes Wilson Hughes Gallery
unique…
JOHN SAYS: We’re really the only contemporary art
gallery in Roanoke. We have a curated art wall on the
side of the building that shows contemporary and
graffiti or street artists’ work.

Wilson Hughes Gallery / Contemporary Art

64

JOHN WILSON

Face

On opening your own
gallery…
JOHN SAYS: You want to make
a million dollars? Start with two
million and open a gallery.
There are some gallerists who
make money. Saatchi probably
makes money. People who are
in the higher end of the market
and can afford to deal with really expensive art might. I don’t
know of gallarists who don’t sell
the $7000 to $10000 range who
really make money. I’m sure
they’re there, but I don’t know
who they are. It’s going to take
more. If you’re opening a gallery
there’re three words you need to
know: location, location, loca-

65

tion. We opened a gallery because that’s what we wanted to
do, not to simply make money.
I would give that advice to anyone. I came into this knowing
we probably wouldn’t make
much money at it. We basically pay our utility bills on our
gallery, that’s about it.

On marketing a gallery
to the public…
SUZUN SAYS: There’s the
Art by Night; it’s good marketing because it has the website,
the brochures, and a Facebook
presence. Every time we have
a show we try to get newspaper coverage. It’s becoming
increasingly difficult, probably

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

because they have the resporters spread so thin in covering
such a large geographic area.
In the beginnng, I paid for a lot
of publicity, which is not productive. Getting as much free
marketing as possible is the
way to go. Smaller galleries like
us don’t have a budget for anything. It’s all seat of the pants
as far as getting the word out.

On the role of galleries
in society…
JOHN SAYS: I really think
that a gallery is a place where
people can actually put their
hands, so to speak, on the art
and decide if it’s what they like.
There’s a lot of places you can

JOHN WILSON
Public Art / Sculpture

Sunny

buy art online. Even I’m in a couple
of online galleries, but for someone
to walk in and experience real art
as it exists, they have to go to a gallery. It’s the retail establishment
of visual arts. In a gallery, there is
someone who knows about the art.
It’s an educational tool. People can
sit back and contemplate the line
detail, the brush stroking, how the
artist has taken a certain idea and
brought it to the forefront. That’s
something you can’t necessarily
see online.
SUZUN SAYS: We get people
calling up and asking if there’s an
admission to the gallery. I think
a lot of people don’t understand
what a gallery is, and they’re a little
bit afraid of it. That’s why I think
something like Art by Night is important, because it allows people to
come into galleries under the umbrella of a larger event so it’s not so
intimidating. I think that galleries
definitely serve as an opportunity for people to see work that they
don’t usuall see. The number of
people who have art in their houses
is really small. People have these
big expensive houses, but they
don’t have art on the walls.
Visit Wilson Hughes Gallery
online for schedule of events and
more information.
wilsonhughesgallery.com

Wilson Hughes Gallery / Contemporary Art

66

Suzun Hughes
Suzun Hughes primarily works in acrylics and photography. Her
technique varies for both, and she feels her art has been heavily influenced by travel she has done throughout her life. In her photography, Hughes shoots straight and uses tools such as Photoshop
for slight color enhancement. She prefers using Hahnem端le paper
for its dark profile and color it produces. She allows the project to
dictate the effects. For instance, in her Totem series, she created
a kaleidoscopic representation by layering and miming singular
images. Then she created two five-foot panels that sit atop each
other to resemble a totem pole. In her acrylic work, she is currently researching Wabi-Sabi with the intention of finding inspiration
for her latest endeavor. Practically, Hughes uses a variety of techniques, such as scratching, scraping, and sand, in order to create a
textural color landscape that has meaning to her and hopefully to
other people as well.
Clockwise:

John Wilson
John Wilson’s varied approach to art crosses genres, but remains contemporary in its scope. Wilson built houses for wealthy clients while
living in California, but he says he could sense a change in his focus.
Art was a logical extension of the architectural elements of the building
work he was doing, including elements of good design, craftsmanship
and artistry in general. He enjoys talking with people about technique.
He draws inspiration from the wide field of Pop Art and Duchamp’s
ready-mades. Wilson’s modern furniture is inspired by Jean Pouve.
He currently has the materials and is planning a large-scale piece that
requires him to move to a larger studio.
Above:

Right:

Detour

Fender

Mixed Media Metal Assemblage
30.5 x 36.5 inches

69

Welded Assemblage Sculpture
72 x 32 x 24 inches

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Wilson Hughes Gallery / Contemporary Art

70

STARFISH IN AACHEN
Known for playing Bach
and Captain Beefheart,
often back to back.
The bar the length
of a small runway, complete
with tiny strobe lights.
Velvet covering on the stools.
Photos of celebrities, old
and new, plastered everywhere,
including taped to the bar’s mirror:
Mickey Mouse along side
Dietrich Bonhoeffer who’s smiling
because it was summer
and life was good, martyrdom
still hiding in the shadows.
“Beer is necessary for the soul”
written on the bathroom door—
Dietrich, taken out into the bright
sun, would have blessed the notion
and the one who wrote it.

LEAVING THE STADIUM AFTER THE HOME TEAM LOSES
Being good citizens my friend and I
deposit our hot dog wrappers and beer bottles
in one of the designated blue trash bins.
Were we able to we’d deposit the entire team
now nursing a nine game losing streak.
Someone yells for the manager to be fired—
or worse, and everyone within earshot yells their assent.
We climb the ramp leading to the subway,
the stadium rather prison-like in its dimming lights
made worse by the fog of a relentless drizzle.
My friend and I who believe sports is a type of magic
watch the reflections from the train window—
apartment houses, bodegas, and the miles of cemeteries
where in this lost season no Lazarus will rise.

Two by Tim Suermondt

71

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

BASS DRUM PEDAL
Think of the blues the bass drummer got when he was replaced one day by a simple metal pedal.
He shows up, and his bass drum’s on the floor, and another man’s playing his drum with his
foot. – James Keller
That drummer’s hands
each like one man.
The foot, too.
Congo Square, French Quarter
bass drummer
lost his job to a pedal
swung by a simple little metal spring.

BAND WAGON
The guys in blue jeans jumped into the back of the rusty pick-up truck.
Inside were cases that held trumpets, trombones. They said, “Come on,”
and I hopped in, and they pulled away, chugging dust and gravel,
then took to grass and pulled down the hill to the big football field,
where, above us, I saw glints of silver up high, cutting clouds;
I’d never seen batons, the young women reaching
up with white gloves and plucking metal from sky.
Try-outs had happened. They had a band. But they put a pair
of shiny cymbals in my hands, had me hold out my arms,
fly. I held, and they said, “You’ll do,” and we took to marching
up and down white lines. All around, the air rumbled:
low brass like thunder, flutes like bird call, trumpets like lightning,
drums like a buffalo stampede. What I was in moved like a vast animal,
centipede, a many-footed thing, and when we moved, the ground—
the grass—felt us, came up, held, and fell away, like the sand does to the sea.

Two by Kevan Rabas

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

72

From This Point On
Atop Brush Mountain,
a weather-beaten
wooden sign denotes
the spot near Blacksburg
where watersheds divide.
Spill half a bottle
of water and it will
trickle eastward,
join the James River,
rush through Virginia
to Chesapeake Bay.
Pour the other half
over the crest,
it will wend westward
to the Mississippi,
splashing over deltas
till it swims into
Mexicoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gulf.
Lie down on this divide,
feel the weight
of consequence, each
decision flowing
like individual
droplets of water
hurtling toward fate,
every choice from
this point on
affecting only
the timetable, not
the destination.
~ Bill Glose

73

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

A Peach from the Icebox
An
itch
for
a
peach
that
drips
down
the
chin
the
forearm
how
sweet
a
lick
a
bite
to
the
stone.

~Daniel Barbare

TAYLOR PALACINO
Photography

Celestial Doorway

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

74

The Adolescent Hunger Artist Takes My Order
When I stopped for a soda on my way to Chicago,
the first thing he said to me was, “Boy, I’m feeling hungry.”
He lunged right into how he’d not eaten since 4 o’clock
the afternoon before. Daylight had nearly disappeared,
at this point. I had not yet managed to place my order,
but I admit his over-sharing made me curious.
“Are you fasting?” I asked, and he said, No, nothing like that.
“Maybe you will want to have been fasting,” I responded,
“because you can take credit for it now for all this time.”
Sometimes he just doesn’t eat, he told me, like, for a week.
That seemed feasible, as I observed him while we chatted.
This kid behind the counter was as skinny as a rail,
and I could almost hear his belt breathing heavily, working
overtime from being cinched so tightly. “What’s your reason,”
I asked, “your goal? The perishing flourish of the artist?”
He answered that it was nothing like that, just that sometimes
he gets so busy that he can’t spend a minute to eat.
Commiserating, I confirmed that finals were this week.
But what I was really thinking was this: what in the world
can make you so massively busy in Gibson City,
Illinois, where this McDonald’s is the lone sign of life?
I imagined him replying to my discourtesy
with a knowing smile one smiles when exhibiting pity
toward the ignorant: “Here, there are so very many things.”
~Brett Foster

75

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

An Evolutionary Figure for the Poet
Even average great spotted woodpeckers
drum their heads into a tree
at fifteen miles per hour, repeatedly
at blurring speeds, and yet the head’s not wrecked.
How does this Unremarkable absorb the shock?
High-speed video, microscopic scans,
and 3-D models help us understand
the built-in shapes that hold off brokenness:
the spongy spots that insulate the skull,
or tissues of varying size that make the beak
more formidable— designs for helmets, other gear.
Resilient, (self) absorbent, it’s the métier
for every poet, whether dynamo or dull.
We peck and peck and peck and then we speak.
~Brett Foster

PIGGYBACK RIDE
By Caroline Bock

On Friday nights, Pop used to carry us all, four kids clinging to his neck and hips and back, and
he’d shout and buck and growl, trampling through the house. He would strip down to his white
undershirt and maneuver around the plaid chairs like a tank gunner, no, a bombardier of a
B52, he’d call out as he swerved past the bathroom and down the short hall returning into the
slip of our living room against the front window and its frayed gold curtains. He could never be
a tank gunner we learned later: Claustrophobia kept him from crawlspaces and elevators and
bear hugs. He wasn’t a man easily boxed in. He had no wife, and we had no mother. He’d tear
around the kitchen table, his freckled skin fired up, his sweat viscid. Eventually, he’d roar to
a stop, jostling us off. Abandoned on the strip of carpet, we’d scramble to his side, afraid he’d
leave us too, afraid of our fear. But he took charge. Ordered that it was time to clean up the mess
we had made— the overturned chairs, the pulled-down curtains, the dust like ashes raised.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

76

BARBARA
KeNNy
A Transcendence
of
Place

Kenny paints in the moment and is guided by instinct.
She says that inspiration can come from anywhere,
from splashes of light on the leaves in the forest, to
sprays of color in a field of flowers: “For instance, the
other day a woman we know at our church had posted
on Facebook a snapshot of all the things she purchased
at the local farmer’s market. She had fruits and vegetables with a few sunflowers, and I was totally struck
by that. It’s the kind of thing I would have gone right
into it. Suddenly just, ‘Oh, look at that. I want to paint
that in a semi-abstract sort of way to utilize these colors and shapes.’ It’s that instantaneous.”
When asked what drives her work, Kenny says she
doesn’t really have a name for it. Inspiration? Muse?
Voices from outer space? Whatever its name, she
says, “It always seems that something outside myself
is telling me what to do. I’ve heard this many times
over the years from different artists. They don’t know
what to call it. I do know that if I try to override it, my
painting inevitably doesn’t turn out the way I want it.
It’s very specific and a strong feeling from both within
and outside myself.”
Kenny prefers working in oils and describes her relationship with them akin to a close friendship. “It’s a
wonderful relationship. I am there in that painting.
I’m walking in that forest. I’m at that seashore; in that
sky. Whatever it is, it’s like we’ve become one. It’s funny because once I’m done painting, and Tibby and I
come back together for dinner in the evening, she’ll
ask me about my day. It’s very hard to describe. I’ve
been off in another place where I can’t take her at all.
There’s no way that she or anyone else can see it. It’s
just a wonderful place to be.”
In a world that is consistently faster paced each day,
Kenny says the act of viewing art can be a catharsis.
She explains, “I’ve had people say that viewing art becomes a peaceful place to be, perhaps some of the same
sensation as I have when I’m painting. For those who
can stop to look at the paintings - when everything is
so instant and so fast and so plastic - it takes them
back to a simpler time. People who have purchased
my paintings have told me they are an important part
of their day – sort of an anti-technology, anti-rat race
place to be. A man bought two paintings at my last
show and said, ‘It’s like you’re capturing something
that is going away, something we’re not going to continue to see,’ and I agree with him.”
Origninally printed in Front Porch Magazine, October 2015

77

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Essence

Barbara Kenny

78

Sunflowers

Sentinal Ridge

Into the Woods

Barbara Kenny

80

81

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

The Great Southwest

Barbara Kenny

82

Gershon
Jonathan Hunger

I

t was a sweltering August day in Annapolis and I was
headed to the dock to gaze out at the Bay and contemplate my life. I was hoping to have some dessert to make
my thinking exercise more enjoyable, but the threescoop mint chocolate chip ice cream I had just bought
was quickly turning to soup, spilling off the cone, and
making my hands a sticky mess. And, I had forgotten
napkins.

My apartment looked like a Sunday morning college
dorm room, but without empty beer bottles on the floor
and posters on the walls. Actually, without anything on
the walls. A friend of mine suggested I tear pages out of
the phonebook and tape them up just to have some sort
of decoration. One day when Gershon was repairing the
sink in my bathroom, I mentioned this idea to him and
he looked at me like I was insane.

I hurried down Main Street trying to eat the ice cream as
fast as I could while weaving in between tourists on the
sidewalk. As I scurried along I felt weirdly like a little kid
rushing home late for dinner. I bumped into more than
one person on the street as I made my way, and could tell
from their looks of irritation that I was leaving pools of
ice cream on the sidewalk for them to sidestep.

“So, what brings you to the docks, Mr. Teacher?”
Gershon asked me.
“You should actually address me as `Mr. Unemployed
Teacher.’ But I’m here pondering life. What about you?
Do you own that boat?”
“Yeah.”

I made it to the dock with little left but the cone. Disgusted, I tossed it away and thought about dipping my hands
into the murky water below to cleanse them, but figured
I’d just end up much grosser. I sat down on the edge of
the pier with my legs hanging over the water, and looked
out on the Chesapeake Bay.

Gershon got paid under the table by my landlords to
“fix up” their already very, very nice house. One time I
watched in awe as his two young assistants struggled to
remove a dow from its frame. He kept hectoring them to
“just get the window out already,” but they stood there indecisively, unsure of how to remove the window without
damaging it. Finally, fed up, Gershon came over with a
sledge hammer and bashed the thing out, leaving shards
of glass and wood everywhere.

“Hey, teacher-man!” I heard someone say.
I turned my head and saw standing on the deck of a
sailboat parked along the dock a broad-shouldered,
well-tanned balding man with a mustache. The man was
sporting a short-sleeve t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops; he
was in town where I was renting a basement apartment
for the summer.

83

“Even if it’s wrong, just do something,” he admonished
them. I thought I saw his point.
“Why?”

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

The two teenagers just gawked at him, apparently in
shock from the damage done. As I looked out at his
sailboat I was aghast by its condition. It wasn’t clear to
me how such a vessel could be considered seaworthy by
any standard.

“Do you like the boat?” Gershon asked, apparently noticing the look on my face.
“It’s…neat. I never realized you were a man of the sea.”
“I was in the Coast Guard in the ‘70s.”
“You were?”
“Yeah. One time they had us out in the ocean doing
research in the middle of a hurricane.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. The look on his
face was some combination of a grimace and smile.

“Want to come along?” he said, ignoring my questions.
“You’re kidding, right? Are you doing rum-smuggling
between Cuba and Key West along the way? And maybe
some deep sea marlin-fishing?”
“Only if you want to.”

“Headed to Guatemala by way of New Orleans.”
“Really?” I said, surprised. “Why? What are you doing
there?”

“Are you going back to school soon?” he asked.
“You make it sound like I’m one of the students,” I said.
In truth it sometimes felt that, since I went straight from
college back to working in a high school, I never really
left.
“But, yeah, school is starting up soon. I’ll only be a sub
for right now. After I quit working at that private school
a few months ago, the job pickings have been slim. And I
can’t figure out if I even want to stay a teacher at all.”
Gershon sat down in a lawn-chair he had placed on the
deck. The boat bobbed up and down gently in the harbor
and the man seemed at peace as he drank the remains of
some indeterminate drink from a mug. He put his flipflopped feet up on the gunwale of the boat.

I couldn’t tell if he was serious.
“I’m a vegetarian, so I’ll skip the fishing.”
He took another sip of his mystery drink.
“So do you want a job on the boat? I need a four man crew
and we’re one short.”
I stood there speechless, and looked down at my ice
cream-covered hands.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll come along.”
Gershon smiled.
“That’s good,” he said. “I like a quick decision.”
“Even if it’s wrong, just do something,” I said to him. “I
look forward to being wrong.”

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

84

In the Middle of Nowhere
By Morgan Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connor

Jay Duret

85 Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

I am back out in the middle
of nowhere which is okay
cause I was born in the middle
of nowhere, actually I was born
on a plane, or so I tell people,
which crosses the middle of nowhere
but really this middle of nowhere
is tropical and the dunes
are more powerful
and the wind is always brutal
and they still wash things by hand
and donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bother with math
or news or kilometers per liter
of the new wheels they slave away
to buy and becoming a grandparent
at forty is old or normal.
My middle of nowhere was,
still is I imagine, between
a reservation and a provincial park
with no coconuts or caju or citrus
but pines and spruce
and the odd maple dripping sap
and heating is a critical issue
so stockpiling is important
there is no falling down
dead drunk in the middle
of nowhere all alone
in the middle of a sandbank
like I see here too much

cause you would be in a snowbank
and really dead if you were drunk
enough, I know I tried
or even charge you
with anything maybe
and a buddy called Fish
shook me and helped me
into a kitchen where we drank
boiled peppermint schnapps
mixed with chocolate milk
and here they just let you lie
like sleeping dogs
they don’t even laugh
or shake their head
or call the cops
who wouldn’t laugh
take your bottle or money
if there was anything left
but I am not complaining
the sea never freezes here
and you never need pants
only a shirt for church if you go
and things are much cheaper
but so are the wages
although there is little to buy
or even want to buy
and if you never studied
geography why would
you care to travel cause
tourists come here too

and how they act makes you think
it is better here in the middle
of nowhere probably best
just to stay alone here
on the edge of the middle
of nowhere counting your
chickens even if they don’t hatch or procreate
and occasionally play
a game or two with a neighbor
if you get along and if you don’t
just ignore them like the tourists do
and stay away from falling down
dead drunk too much cause
waking up covered in sand
instead of dead in ice
and bug bites is a young man’s
game and not so fun once
you have done it a few times
an easy way to piss off
the neighbors or at least lose
their respect which is the
worst case scenario in
the middle of nowhere
especially self-respect
in the middle of nowhere
cause no one is going
to come around and give you
any they might in the middle of somewhere
but in the middle of nowhere you have to
keep what you need to survive.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

86

“In our MFA program, student writers participate in Writing Workshops, in
the great traditions of those at Harvard and Iowa. The Workshop is a sensitive
and supportive environment where students learn to improve their craft
under the guidance of Master Teachers, who are also published authors.”

—Well, who wants to start? Comments anybody? Or
did everyone get stoned at the break?
—I’ll start. I really didn’t get involved until page
seventeen, when he meets the girl. Then I liked it,
but there needs to be more… more feeling, somehow.
—Yeah. I’ll just read you what I have written here
on my copy. This character is a drip. This is a boring character who doesn’t want any confrontation.
I’m bored.
—I mean the question, is “Do we feel it?”
—I just wanted more from this character somehow.
Like, well, like in Greg’s story, we could see how
the character was. I mean... it was amazing. We
could feel the vomit, and... I guess I just wanted
more feeling. I was just, well I don’t know, it wasn’t
stupid or anything. I was just bored.
—Generally I don’t say anything while my work is
discussed, but when I see that the comments are
going off track, occasionally I’ll mention my point
of view, as I will now. My conception of the work is
the following, and perhaps this might not be completely evident in the context of a single chapter,
removed from the larger work. What I’m trying to
portray is discrete states of awareness in the character. To show a certain attitude, a certain mode of
perception, and as the book progresses, to show
87

how that mode changes, step by-step, and frankly at
very low ebb, so that admittedly, a majority of the
readers might say there isn’t “emotion” in the way
they desire...
—But don’t you think-—Please let me just finish this thought, and I’ll be
happy to answer your question.
—What I do think exists are arcs of perception,
from chapter to chapter. Changes in modes of
observation, which might--One, not be noticeable
from a single chapter read out of context; or Two,
might not be enjoyed by the average reader. A lot of
the book is observations often without significant
emotion attached, because these represent the character’s analyses and modes of awareness... Thank
you for waiting, Greg. Please pose your question.
—I mean I’ve read a lot of books, right? I read a
book about a guy walking around Paris just thinking, right? But this, this… I’m not interested in
this. I mean I either like it or I don’t, right?
—Quite so, and thank you for your phraseology.
Indeed you either like it or you don’t. You may
be bored by this kind of writing, even if given the
whole book.
—Well, I wouldn’t read a book like this.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

By
R. Sebastian
Bennett

—Perhaps not, but it comes down to a stylistic preference. I appreciate that point of view. But really it
doesn’t affect my conception of the work.
—Overall, I just couldn’t relate. It was like I wanted
some ee-motion, or I don’t know...

—YOU HAVE TO FEEL IT FROM YOUR HEART! YOU’VE GOT
TO BE READY TO THROW THE FUCKING WORK OUT THE
WINDOW! YOU’VE GOT TO FEEL THE FUCKING WORK IN
YOUR HEART!

—You’re right. I’m not ready to throw it out the window.
And I think that in your analysis, you-—IT’S NOT AN ANALYSIS!

—Perhaps you wanted more sex in the story?
—I made certain decisions before writing this piece.
Obviously there are tonal and stylistic decisions. But
there are also decisions about the audience--whom one is
writing for... I decided to endow my audience with the
following characteristics: One, more intelligent than I am;
Two, more critical than I am; Three, more interested in
Mexico than I am. Now granted this necessarily limits
me to a very small audience, but that doesn’t matter.
—So what you’re saying is you think you’re more intelligent than we are…
—No, I’m certainly not saying that. I’m saying there is the
possibility that you don’t have all of the basic characteristics of the audience I imagined. For example, you might
not be more interested in Mexico than I am... But again,
these are just basic audience considerations.
—No one’s on trial here. No one’s arguing with your conception of the story, they’re just saying it’s not working...
—I can appreciate that as individual opinion. I happen
to disagree, and to explain my point of view, but understand the others.
—You’re not listening to how they feel.

—Well, in whatever emotional occurred at that end of the
table, I think you need to appreciate a situation where the
author is devoted enough to his conception of the work—
namely he feels it from his heart—such that he’s not at all
willing to throw his writing out the window, even in the
face of misinterpretation.
—But listen to you. Misinterpretation… It’s either there
or it’s not, man.
—That entire conception is a form of interpretation. One
way of interpreting the validity of writing is that it hits
you at gut level, and-—I disagree with this whole idea of “interpretation.”
—Okay. One way of assessing writing is to decide that it
has to hit you at gut level, without interpretation. Another way is to decide that the text should be critically analyzed. My conception of the work is really to do neither
of these, but to allow the reader to observe the developing
process and modes of awareness in the main character.
—It’s either there or it’s not, man...
—Look, he’s saying you gotta feel it from your heart. I
mean, it’s either there or it’s not.
—Thank you for an interesting discussion.

—I am listening. But really, given that I don’t happen to
agree, what attitude would you like me to display in this
situation that you don’t think I’m displaying now?

—I need a drink, man.
—Gimme a big joint.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

88

3
by
Cam
Kurer
Ice Storm
it is no longer time
to pick corn in wayne
A sour-faced wind has turned
the last cob to ice
and the shellers are frozen
in their furrowed track
even the cold stare of the moon
is twisted under the skeletons
of broken elm
from over hanging eaves
innocent eyed children break off icicles
while grownups
stack cords of firewood
for the long thaw

Marsh Geese
from a haze of cattails
a line of black smoke rises
drifts off with the wind
twisting and turning
like rope
unraveling
the falling ash settles
on a stubble field
of smoldering corn
a flash of fire
erupts in the early dawn
the line of smoke
rises again.
searching where it can rest.

Jefferson High was holding auditions for Romeo and
Juliet and because I thought myself an actor at the
age of sixteen I tried out for whatever I could get. A
week later the cast list was posted on the auditorium
door and I had to content myself with Friar Lawrence,
while Kevin Clements was crowned with the role of
Mercutio. Nobody seemed to know why he got the
role in the first place.

Mercutio
By Patrick Clark

I

went back to Ellis County for a funeral last summer. It was the middle of the week and the old Baptist
church off the Decatur Road was filled with men in white
dress shirts and dark ties done up in half-windsors. Clusters of women and grandmothers were in purple and gray,
sitting with hands softly folded on their laps.
The only ones my age were in the first three rows of the
wooden sanctuary, with the brothers, cousins, and friends
of the young man in the casket. I took my seat in the back
next to a lady with a gray lace hat. Either way I would be
sitting with strangers.
I didn’t know Kevin Clements too well. Maybe I regretted
that since I wouldn’t have any chance to in the immediate
future. I hadn’t ever made a real effort to talk to him since
we were in school together, and even then, we just vaguely
knew each other because of a spring play.
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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Kevin was almost nineteen and still in public school.
He stood over six foot, a mop of curly brown hair
that nearly covered his eyes and wound down his
neck, with a black fishhook shaped piercing lodged
in his ear. Every afternoon he’d enter the theater with
the faint smell of pot on his jacket and an old Braves
cap on his head. He was by no means an idiot but he
wasn’t exactly a wit.
We started rehearsing in the musty school theater
under the direction of Mrs. Foster, Jefferson’s sharptongued, chain-smoking, drama teacher for the past
decade or so. She was the captain of a cast of two-dozen teenagers most of whom, Kevin and myself included, had never seen a Shakespearian play.
I was told that because Shakespeare was dead that you
could do whatever you wanted with the words he left
behind. Naturally Romeo and Juliet could be a parable
for whatever modern conflict or situation you wanted. With this in mind, Foster decided to cut over half
the dialogue, rearrange what was left, insert original
speeches about poverty and schoolyard fights, create
interpretative dances for the balcony scene, dress the
cast in all black, and add original music performed
live on electric bass and African tribal drum.
All this time I tried to learn my mangled lines. After
a month of rehearsals, I knew the ship was sinking
and there weren’t enough lifeboats. Most of what was
going on baffled me, especially Foster’s attitude. If anyone messed up one of their big speeches the director
would come down on them like a hammer, “Well why
don’t you know it then?” she’d demand, nearly spilling
her growler of 7-Eleven coffee, “Were you playing
grab ass in the dressing room or something?”

But whenever Kevin would forget, or simply make up,
whole sections of Mercutio’s dialogue the tune would
change.

There was an opening street scene, a fight done in
slow motion for no apparent reason, and the plot
struggled along to the Capulet’s ball. I passed Mercutio backstage. I could smell the weed.

“Now Kevin, let’s try it again from the fee simple.”
From time to time I’d see them smoking cigarettes in
the school loading dock, the battered script open on a
folding chair.
Once I ran into him at the gas station on the Decatur
Road. I was stopping for gas and he was toting a case
of Bud Light to his car. He knew the people that ran
the place. “Hey man,” he said in a mellow voice.
I said hello and we went on about rehearsals.
“Foster’s crazy. I shoulda quit two months ago,” I said.
The whole process was grating on me. Five hours a
day had become eight hours leading up to opening
night. The director had been having daily shouting fits
and the cast was barely hanging on.

But something happened that night. I watched from
the wings as Mercutio and company entered for his
first scene. The sophomore kid playing Romeo blandly
rattled off his lines, then Mercutio began.
“O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you!”
He killed the thing. Absolutely killed it. There was
a charm and agony in his voice and purpose in his
words. He never let up, even when the rest of us
seemed aimless and confused, he just kept rolling
through.
Then came Tybalt, a sulking mess. Mercutio held
nothing back.
“O calm, dishonourable, vile submission! Tybalt, you

rat-catcher, will you walk?”
Kevin lit a smoke and shrugged his shoulders. None of
this bothered him.

“What wouldst thou have with me?” replied the nasal
girl playing Tybalt.

“And there’s a dress rehearsal tomorrow,” I went on
fearfully.
“I’ll see ya tomorrow then,” he said getting into his car.
I can’t remember the dress rehearsal I had dreaded
so much, everything was lost in a blur of caffeine
and exhaustion. But opening night is still as clear as
anything.
Everyone was hot as the curtain went up. We had
provided our own costumes. I was in a black suit from
last year’s dance that didn’t fit. The Chorus took the
spotlight dressed like Cagney in a dark trench coat.
“Now the two hours’ traffic of our stage,” he recited to
the audience of family and school friends. It would be
more than two hours, but we grudgingly played along.

“Good king of cats, nothing but one of you nine lives!”
There were no swords in this show, just plastic switchblades wrapped in electrical tape. But the fight was
as real as anything Shakespeare could’ve cooked up.
Then he fell, slumping into Benvolio’s arms.
“A plague o’ both your houses! They have made
worms’ meat of me.”
He was perfect. I felt a pain in my gut seeing him limp
offstage.
The pallbearers carried Mercutio out of the church,
his friends from up the Decatur Road falling in behind. I got that pang in my gut again. Damn shame he
got drunk and wrecked his car.

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92

CONNIE SNYDER LESTER
Acrylic

Kaia

93 Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Drifting

The Heart is an Odd-Shaped Shore

The fog proliferates, and what remains
From the smudged dimensions of the trees
And shallows are the strokes of consciousness
Edging off to sleep,
The stones in the brains circuits
Finally softening to a kind of clay,
Statuaries of dream stoked
In the body’s easing apparatus.
And then the fire, gorgeous inner flame,
Rose up from who knows what spirit,
What chemical or god, blooming new worlds,
New trees impervious to fog,
New enigmas for the chimeric brain
To loosen and dissolve.

Banana palms, and the light
Like old bedrock stripping the dark.
In this place where the river
Takes your name,
Where the soul chirps and buoys,
The ferryman is treading his way.
He is building a pattern
For our hearts to follow,
For the one in us who knows
The cardinal ricochet,
The leewarding drift
Towards home.
In the missing quadrants,
In the map’s unmarked edges,
There is a bird rising
Like a song-filled fist,
A ship full of secret wagers.
If we can unspool our glittering nets
And catch a single reddened streak
In the darkened waters,
Then even the iron-girdled weight
Of all our longing
Will suddenly burst
Like wild fruit.

Widow Maker
Inside the bronze barometers,
The heart’s war-torn paths,
This thing I keep feeling
Is lifting its barely-humming wings
Against the bone.
And as I pass down along
The lavender windfall,
The red, detrital light,
I am growing more and more
Unhinged,
More convinced of the world’s
Passing beauty,
More amazed how even
The breath of a sudden wind
Can undo my dreaming.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

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TIM SNYDER
Photography

95 Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Postcards from Nowhere

E
E
R
TH
by
o

ch
y
e
P

Full moon
and nothing else
The light travels faster than
you can utter Darkness
Leafage and brown logs splitting back into
molecules
into midnight’s unhidden veil
Out there ocean’s murky blue face freezes
and I move forward.

v
e
n
Ka

The Villain

Passed Eternity

Someone goes inside the heart
of someone else
quietly without making any noise
maybe except this one
which sounds like a matchstick lit
inside a fresh grave

I’m lying in bed all day,
watching the flies on the ceiling
walking
as the light outside turns
cloudy, ashen like some
ancient papyrus and I look
at the clock on the wall measuring
only itself then I throw my pen
in the sink full of dirty dishwater
where the waves break and slide
away with no time

down upside

Someone goes inside someone’s heart
and stays there as long as he have to
He does not go out to drink water or breathe
and just stays in there until the other one
says
Game over

left.

Then he comes out of his heart
quietly without making any noise
maybe except this one
which sounds like a pair of lips separating
suddenly after a long kiss

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White Hot Honky Tonk

She wears the mark of her Father,
of bourbon and ash,
gathered gradually
from long walks
on Lower Broadway,
stopping to hear
the sounds of centuries
whenever possible.
She wears the mark
of a far flung destroyer,
music always in her ears.
Away from humid land.
Away from the smell
of cut grass and the
NASCAR dreams of
weekends spent in
yards with beer bottles
and shirtless children
running wild like puppies.

See the city
as it should be seen
teeth bared
tribal fires
blood trails on the sidewalks.
Wandering the corner
of 7th and Broad
she moves with
a swing that makes
cars stop,
that draws offers, incantations,the
whiskey and smoke
soaking her to the bone.
Tumescent dreams
too much for one head
rend the heart,
human sacrifice as she
tries to give them birth
these ideas, these betrayals.

The city can adjust you,
can pour the
whisky and smoke
down your throat.

Forgiveness?

It just happens.

Dogs forgive.
Mothers forgive.

Forgiveness is a word,
a comfort word.

She wears the mark of her Father.

~ Clint Brewer

97 Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Angel of the Pelvic Sensation
By Guinotte Wise

“The thing you should ask about someone’s work, sculpture in particular, is not ‘por qué?’” He
paused, steepled his fingers in front of his face, closing his eyes. He looked gastrically pained. “Never,
‘why’ did you do this particular thing, when you could have done another particular thing.”
“No, nunca, nunca, nunca ‘why.’ But, ‘why not?’ You see? Why the fuck not? That’s what I ask myself a hundred times a day.” He turned and walked away from the couple.
A pretty American girl in a short skirt and cowboy boots with a colorful red and green pepper
motif approached him, offered her hand. He took it in both of his and bowed. His expression could have
been a leer or just a welcoming smile. They stood near a pedestal displaying a polished bone pelvis, probably a cow’s. The sculptor had embellished it with chrome feathered wings and a plaque from an appliance
that said, “Caliente. Fria.” An Art Deco switching box completed the work, which was labeled Angel de la
Sensación Pélvica. The sculptor had not let go of the attractive girl’s hand.

“Why ‘Hot and Cold?’” she asked, nodding toward the piece.

The light shifted from dusk outside the large windows, and as he opened his mouth to answer her,
the light changed again to a saturated pre-storm green, a virulent swamp of color. The explosion caved in
the front of the gallery and broke windows up and down the street. A car containing the explosives had
lifted in front of the gallery and tumbled across the street into a small restaurant with a sidewalk cafe.
The couple the sculptor had walked away from had gone to the back of the gallery to get a drink
at the open bar. The man had been standing against a pillar, an iron beam with exposed bolts, the woman
to his right. She was no longer there and he looked around for her. In the rubble he saw her blouse and he
started to set his drink down but couldn’t find a flat place. Then some of his sensibilities began to return
and he dropped the drink and reached for his wife’s blouse. It was a bar towel.
His hearing was gone and he could feel the blood from his ears on the sides of his face. He shook
his head and popped his jaws but no hearing returned. He felt movement behind him and saw shapes in
uniforms, firemen, a policeman with an automatic weapon, some people from the street. A man led him
away from the bar, and he tried to explain about his wife. The man seemed to understand but kept tugging
him toward the street where lights flashed from police vehicles, ambulances, fire equipment. The building’s
facade was entirely gone, the second story was open, and people were moving about up there. He saw one
of the attractive girl’s cowboy boots on the sidewalk. Nunca nunca nunca, ran through his mind.

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Hugh Mercer Goes to War
Apothecary Mercer locked the door.
Inside his shop stood bottles row on row
Containing herbs and simples, powders, pills
For every malady that’s known to man
But one, the man-made scourge of tyranny.
He’d emptied out the leeches, swept the floors,
Including the adjoining empty room
Where Washington the surveyor once stored
His papers, lines and sextants, peacetime tools.
He drew in clean air from old Fredericksburg,
This last breath as an ordinary man.
From now on he would deal with history
And order rows of soldiers to the charge,
Knowing that his simples could not cure
The death that certainly awaited them. –
The cruel old alchemy of generals.
Till he in turn was torn by cannon shell
At Princeton in New Jersey, far away
From peaceful gardens in the shade of elms
Where silent simples keep his memory.
~ James F. Gaines

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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

JOHN M. WILLS
Photography

Hazelwild Barn

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

100

TWENTY FLOORS DOWN IN LOS ANGELES
Twenty floors down in Los Angeles,
I tore out the pages of your notes,
tumbling, grainy with my suspension.
Your words, dark ink fractured on
white papers, scraped the finger that’s
still wedded to a gold wedding band-One squint and two shivering away,
your magnificent strokes of the Hollywood sign above our bed chased into
walls of azure sky, where the red eyes
of long neck summers and sunset
canapés strapped inside two decades,
embroidered between Bordeaux wine
and candlelight-After disrobing, I fell into the bed, dried
lips tasted your woolly scarf and fingers
reached for those familiar traces on the
headboard. You had often said I prefer
living with old things, funny, new things
always come with extra weight of details,
traveling on a frenzied speed to which I
feel nothing for-Wood blinds stayed close, barring the
world with language you had rewritten
into speech, and new emotions you felt
to be your new shelter. At that narrow
instance, I could hear no longer your
feet tiptoed across the carpet, a care as
you set to dazzle me from my half-sleep
to wake-I woke to find that everything I’d lost
was still lost.
~ Lana Bella

101 Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

A Million Tiles
There’s a million tiles on the roof of the opera house
They are self-cleaning, and only one percent of them have needed replacing
since their installation decades ago
Nearby, guards stand on the Harbor Bridge looking bored
Commuters hurry over it towards downtown jobs
Ferries glide over the water like water bugs—
wait, those are water bugs—
I ‘m looking into a corner of the quay where they congregate
and I’ve taken a mind-expanding drug
like Dr. Oliver Saks did in his early years
before he met the man who mistook his wife for a hat
Not really so odd—we mistake our spouses for all manner of things
We mistake everyone we meet for something other than they are
Freud had a term for that—
it will come to me in a minute
Where do all the opera house roof tiles go
that have been replaced?
I didn’t see any in the opera house gift shop
I’d like to have one
I’d like not to mistake my wife for a hat
but if I did
I think I’d like her to be a classy fedora
like my grandfather wore in the Bronx
and when he took the subway to his job in the garment district
a hat that could mislead others into thinking that he was someone
when he was just a presser in the garment industry
His kids mistook him for a tyrant and hated him
I mistook him for a mystery,
because he couldn’t speak English and just about all he ever said to me was
Nu?
(Yiddish for So? )
How does a five-year-old respond to a question as open-ended as that?
After all, he was not a psychotherapist
and I was not his patient

~ Mitchell Grabois

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102

Petals
We found a small plant growing in the rift
of a split stone. There seemed so little space
for anything to hold: how could those roots
find passages to reach the fertile clay?
We could not trace their paths. And yet, long shoots
lifted themselves above the cracked rockface,
encouraged by warmth and sunlight. Where they curled
tendrils into the air, ringlets unfurled,
revealing in their motions delicate
red buds, whose calyxes, in sequence, fell
onto the flashing stone. The tendrils’ sway
seems almost like a dance: the small buds swell,
their changing hues describing intricate
transfigurations: metamorphosis
of green into a prism’s synthesis
of every kind of light, collecting here,
almost for us, all colors into one,
as if those blossoms’ beauty could convey
something eternal, even as they spun
their petals open, welcoming the clear
pure sunlight, as one welcomes a great gift.

TWO
by

W.F. L

antry

Courtship
I stood there in the batter’s box near dusk,
my hands already talced, my cap just slant,
all limbering and loose, waved my turned bat
across the plate a couple times. I dug
my left foot way inside, my right foot braced
almost outside the line, and then looked up.
She nodded, wound, and let the first one go
straight down the middle. I took my best swing
and found only the empty air: Strike one.
I saw her fingers spinning on the next
and, liking curves, angled my swing towards right
but missed completely. Two. I saw her smirk.
The third came hot. Low and inside. I whiffed,
and stood there, shocked. I watched her wind again.
Ok, I said, why not? And this time swung
for center, deep. Her change up fooled my eye.
And so it went, past sunset, as she threw
and I kept missing while the darkness fell.

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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

The Associate
By Peg Alford Pursell
Her husband told her he was going out of the country the second week of the month, just after
her birthday. A strange sensation crept over her skin and she felt such as when the person you
are trying to reach is sitting with his phone, unanswering. That evening they had dinner at the
apartment of his associate who had invited them, he explained, because she, being new to the
city, was lonely. She wanted them to feel comfortable with her. She needed friends.
Her place smelled of curries and something vaguely like decaying sunflowers. The
womanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s face reminded her of a finely cracked mirror but not one so broken that you would
discard it. Possibly, the associate was not her husbandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lover after all. The woman showed
them into the living room where they were to wait the ten or fifteen minutes until dinner, the
wine they brought left unopened on the table. They were alone in the small room and quiet,
some unseen threads connecting them to the earlier conversation. You are supposed to talk,
she said, because she needed to learn his secret. He placed his finger to his mouth and shook
his head.
The meal was dry, and a large cockatiel squawked in its cage at they ate, rustling its
dusty feathers, powdery motes flailing in the fading sunlight. After, they waited in the hall for
the elevator, white light illuminating the number of their floor, then disappearing, and the
doors never sliding open. They descended the three flights of stairs to the street and began
the long walk back across the bridge. Birds hunted underneath, sending up a cacophony of
muted noises.
He stopped to look out over the river low against its banks. He always liked to look
at water, no matter its qualities, and true to his nature, he seemed to see the river as it might
have been once, a rush of water over the huge rocks, alive, pushing to the sea. He took her
arm, placing his hand between her armpit and breast, and she said nothing, thinking of a time
when their bodies seemed so uncomplicated, so vital, so known.

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104

Waiting with Someone
The call came Monday morning, just a week after we’d returned from visiting with my mother and sister Connie at Inverness, their retirement village in Tulsa. Karen, the clinic nurse, was in Mom’s apartment with two EMT’s. Karen had found Mom semi-conscious and having great difficulty breathing.
She put Mom on the phone, and I heard, “I’m dying, but I’m not going to the hospital. Hospitals kill
people. Tell the family to come.” An EMT got on the phone and said, “Ma’am, your mother has pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure which is reversible if we get her to the hospital in time.”
Weeping, I replied, “But you don’t understand. She’s 90 years old, her husband died ten months ago,
and she doesn’t want to live. I have her medical power of attorney, she has a DNR on record, and both
duty and love require me to honor her wishes. You cannot take her to the hospital.”
Then I hung up and agonized.
As my husband and I began preparations to fly to Tulsa, I continued to brood until Karen called to say
she’d arranged for hospice to take over Mom’s care. Mom was on oxygen and had been given Ativan,
which had calmed her down. I’d e-mailed our sons; Brad, who lives in Wichita, said he’d pack up his
family and see us at Inverness Tuesday morning. The youngest son, Mike, was in Chicago and would
arrive in Tulsa that evening. The middle son Wes was keeping in touch by phone and e-mail. By 10:30
that evening, Doy, Mike and I were at Inverness, visiting briefly with Mom. She was coherent, pleased
to see us, and breathing easily.
The next day was a blur of people and activity as hospice settled Mom (and took her off the critical
list), and Brad, Holly, Ripley (4) and Louise (3) came. I wandered from her apartment to skilled
nursing with supplies and clothing I thought Mom might need. Con, who lives in skilled nursing, two
doors down from the room Mom now occupied, managed to ask each of us except the children if we
would become her caregiver if Mom died. Con, a 62-year old paranoid schizophrenic, wears a colostomy bag, is mostly bedridden and incontinent. We told her the truth—we will see that she is cared
for, but not by any of us.
The children brought joy with every bouncing entrance into the sick room; Mom liked the company
and the attention, and especially seemed to enjoy telling everyone that she was dying. We ended the
day with a family dinner, then Brad and his family returned to Wichita, and the rest of us fell into bed.

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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Who is Waiting to Die
By SuzAnne C. Cole
Doy and I were sleeping deeply when Mike called from Mom’s room. She had phoned him in the apartment to say she didn’t want to die alone. Pulling clothes over our pajamas, we hurried to her room. She
had removed her oxygen tubes because “they make me nervous,” and her breathing was shallow and
rapid.
Having never experienced waiting with someone dying, I could only offer what I thought I’d like. We
held her hands and shared stories about her travel, marriage, work, and family. At midnight a nurse
restored the oxygen, and said the hospice doctor would be there soon. Mike and I went back to our beds
while Doy stayed through the doctor’s visit. The doctor gave Mom a thorough physical and said she
could easily live five more years with drugs to help her heart and the edema. The immediate crisis was
over.
The next few days were a hard slog of waiting and working. I cleaned Mom’s apartment to make it safer
if she returns there, Doy worked on finances, and got Mom’s and Con’s financial power of attorney. We
also spent many hours sitting with Mom who couldn’t decide if she wanted to stay in skilled nursing
(for the attention and the regular meals) or go back to the apartment because “there are too many rules
here.”
She particularly did not like being unable to self-medicate. At her request, I’d retrieved bottles of Tylenol PM and meclazine from the apartment, but when the nurse saw them, she confiscated them. The
night Mom called Mike, she asked him to bring her bottle of sleeping pills. Daily, she winked slyly at
me as she patted the pocket of her robe and said, “This is where the sleeping pills are and this is where
they’ll stay—that damned nurse is not going to find them here.”
And, as far as I know, they are still there. Is this irresponsible? Is there part of me that wishes she’d just
take a handful and sleep forever? I don’t know. I just know I didn’t take them from her nor did I tell the
nurse she had them.
By the sixth day of our stay, we were tired of waiting and of each other. When Mom began to rant against
one of our daughters-in-law, I’d had enough. I left the room, returning only to give her a quick kiss on
the cheek before we departed for the airport.
We live now with one ear for the phone, hoping for, and fearing, the latest news.

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

106

TIM SNYDER
Photography

Boner Train Gap Ollie

107

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Aquarium
Rather than a queen

Bathed in my own tears
While worshipped
Before glass walls
I would be

A tiny shrimp

At the bottom

Of the food chain
Even to be

Eaten alive
While swimming
Freely

~ Yaun Changming

Clarendon Grill
Trying to find an altar in Clarendon,
The cubicle was no help,

As soon as I cleared the desk for the sacrifice

More papers and deadlines fell in hapless piles
In the subway I retreated to old booths
Where phones once hung,

Too late for a confession, I stood

Looking at the glowing backs of well-lit maps
Bar after bar, I compiled a tabernacle,
Put hands on waxy wood,

Then tried to fashion the wine into a key

To open doors towards any of the nearby flesh

~Ben Nardolilli

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

108

What Is Justice Anyway?
I am 80. If ever there was a time for answers to
life’s persistent questions it is now. Except that I
don’t
know the answers. I didn’t then and I still don’t
now.
Sometimes I dream about the Mekong Delta, although I have never been there. The jungle contains no answers only repeats the questions.
Fifty years ago, Peter, a very lax student, entered
my office. With his large brown eyes and his hesitant manner, he asked if he could ask for a favor.
The Vietnam War was in full fury and students
who were called for the draft could get a deferment
if a C or better average was maintained.
Peter had received a D in my class, which I considered to be very generous considering the quality
of his attention and grade scores. Peter, however,
saw things differently. He begged for a C, citing
the dangers of war and his recent induction letter
from the Army.
Being a new academic still impressed with the rigors and responsibilities of educational standards,
as well as the sister of a West Point graduate and
the wife of an Army Medical Officer, I declined.
Six months later, Peter was killed on the Mekong
River.
I would visit the Vietnam Memorial and look for
him but I cannot remember his last name, just his
begging, brown eyes.
~ Ruth Ann Allaire

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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

WILLIAM C. CRAWFORD
Photography

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

110

A Night in
New

“What the hell!?” I mumbled,
sitting up on my elbows, the sudden, sharp noises
out of place in the quiet coastal retreat.

My wife stirred. “What was that?” she said, groggily,
asleep before she heard my answer.
“I have no idea...” I mumbled to myself, looking at
the dim light of the night through the open door of
the cabin.
There was no movement outside of the small cottage, the whisper of the box fan sucking the cool
ocean air into the small room the only sound. I lay
back, straining to listen for anything out of place.
Were those gun shots?! The darkness deepened
around me. I lay there, suddenly awake, holding
my breath, trying to fit the sound into the normally
peaceful atmosphere. We were staying for the week
in a small cluster of cabins on the coast, many of
them empty, for a long needed vacation.
Repeated staccato cracks once again rang out in the
night. Three this time, irregular, while the first had
been two in rapid succession.
I sat up again. That really sounded like gunshots!
Was that closer than before? I got up, tip-toed to the
sliding door and peered out past the screened openings on the small porch. The night air was crisp and
111

upon the yard that stretched nearly to the rocky
embankment that framed the coastline. The faint
twinkles of a green light on a buoy in the harbor lit
dimly on the horizon, the ocean tide crashing faintly against the rocks.
I crept to the kitchen at the back of the cabin. Light
from a streetlight streamed into the open window
over the sink, but I could see nothing in it’s orange
glow. I turned to the other window on the opposite
wall, overlooking the cabin behind mine, but there
was no sign of life there. I had seen a family there
earlier today, but now it was black and impenetrable.
I stared at the small screened porch, trying to pierce
the gloom and see into the shadows that lay thick
upon the interior, to no avail.
What was that?! I spun around, fear crawling down
my back, the scuffling sound faint, like a shoe fall
upon gravel. I took a cautious glanced out of the
window, trying to stay out of sight, shielding my
eyes from the glare of the streetlight.
Nothing.
I leaned against the wall, barely breathing, waiting,
listening.
Who would be shooting something at this time of
night? My mind filled with images, a man holding a

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Hampshire
gun, face emotionless, eyes wild, the rapid staccato
bursts as he fires into the bodies of his cabin mates,
blood spraying everywhere, looking around,
startled at the loud sounds of the gunshots in the
night, wondering who may have heard.
Anyone who may be awake.
Despite my heavily beating heart my eyelids started
closing over my tired eyes.
I must stay awake! But my eyelids would have
none of that, drifting lower and lower.

By R.S. Chevalley

Sitting on the side of the bed I stared out into the
night, past the front door for quite a while, fearing
sleep, but fearing wakefulness as well. Is it better
to die, aware the end is near, or to have it come
upon you unawares?
I lay back on the bed, muscles tense with fear,
staring at the door. The curtain flailed about in the
moving air, I strained to keep my eyes open, looking for any movement, knowing I was powerless to
stop what may happen.
I must stay awake...

I started from a doze, leaning against the wall. I
considered waking my wife, her snores still echoing
around the cabin. She would never believe me, and
perhaps the noise of her talking would draw the
gunman our way!
No, I could not!
I continued looking out each window in turn,
straining to see movement, looking for a figure
creeping through the night, the shadows taking
shape in the dimness as fatigue muddled my senses.

My head relaxed upon the pillow. As sleep descended upon my weary consciousness my half
open eyes drifted to the door...
Was that a shadow I just saw cross the doorway? A
footfall...

My eyes closed.

Darkness.

Finally, after an age of waiting, watching for anything, I walked back to the bed, quietly, staying
away from the windows.

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Roomie
If pants were an option,
Two
you would always opt out,
and you did.
You, my whimsical friend,
are the trumpet of random noises
by
and the sliding of pigeon-toed feet
echoing down the hallway.
Mich
You are candy-colored underwear,
e
Sand lle
a sports bra,
ers
a kitchen table, a giant canvas,
a paintbrush, and turquoise acrylic.
You are French toast at midnight, and clean floors,
burned butter and fire alarms,
Christmas lights and a year-round holiday-tree,
kittens,
and kitchens,
a bunny phone, a waxed eyebrow,
thoughtful cards, personal artYou, dear Rooms, love with your whole heart.
You are unabashedly yourself.
You are sunflowers, butternut squash,
matches, coconut cake,
resilience,
Rain Prayers II
and light.

There is nothing quite so hopeful
as a warm evening rain.
Pounding on the roof,
the sudden rush sounding through the windows
draws me to my balcony.
This kind of air lifts me,
fills my cheeks like balloons,
stretches my sleepy ribs.
This precipitation,
with its pings against rooftops and gutters,
demands me to pause
and be grateful,
each drop a proof of possible life,
a call to witness,
then join in everything it has to offer.
This kind of night asks me to dance,
and I want, so badly,
to be the woman who always says yes
to this joy.

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Down the Orinoco
I wanted to run to cascades of falling
rain under the cloak
of Amazon leaves and
peel mangoes with our teeth
down the Orinoco.
I wanted to present your face
to the Inca Sun
so when your name was sung by the long-beak toucan
we could fly south with the sparrows
and take refuge under the bells
in La Plaza de San MartĂ­n.
And if a thunder rolled over the Andes
roaring
your name again

we could follow Venus and
sleep on a condorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wing until we landed
on the silent feet of the Moais.

We would offer a dance
to the head stones, honor their gaze to the East
and you, my sweet child,
would sing over the volcanoes of Rapa Nui
riding on waves with sunrise
in your eyes.
If only I had not missed that call, the voice
of another mother
warning.
But you were already taken.

Already gone.

~ Maria Elena B. Mahler

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Not Nearly Near Enough to Save
-- After AirAsia Flight 8501

A glimpse of ruin— I dream a teacup spills, refills in somersaults of sorrow, settling
among black coral & featherstars
found fast asleep at the bottom
of the Java Sea.
Striking— choir of coral stirs—
so many mouths gasp on impulse
of wave and sound and sway,
sinking in the humility of
losing one teacup’s light.
Palm down, a slender hand searches
the dark shelf, wanting to recover
the cup’s fortune swallowed
by an indifferent sea. . . .
Here, nothing truly expires.

How Much Did Brahms Know About
Pulling Strings?
Is it safe to sit in the intimacy of chamber music,
when your spirits sink in the thoughts of what’s
waiting for you?
Your hands are empty. No longer safe, gripping
a pen’s fine point, writing glossy notes to those
who will never listen to your advisement, but
rush to the inked grade that awaits them.
Judgment, you think, is negligible. You listen
to the violin’s insistent question to the cello’s
constant measure & wonder if it’s unimportant—
who’s listening really?
Like Brahms, what you love has made
a fool of you.

Two by M.J. Iuppa

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TIM SNYDER
Photography

Puddle World

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116

The Walking Man
There he is, on the shoulder
of the two­lane road
out of town. Warm overcast day
just after 9 in the morning.
A resolute walk, not rapid
but strong. Backpack.
I pass him, then drive on.
Rearview mirror shows a few seconds
of short white beard, lean face.
Jeans flap against long shins.
Nothing ahead for him but a long walk
to the next town past new­planted corn.
Now light rain dots my windshield.
I should stop.
But I’m a woman alone.
I drive on. A dip in the road and he’s gone.
Later on, my business done,
I’m halfway home on the same road.
It’s almost noon. There he is,
the same walk, and there’s the backpack.
I should stop, turn around.
Wouldn’t take long, just back to town.
But then, rain’s ended.
Lunch is waiting. I drive on.
Since then,
every time I drive that road again
I look for him, to make amends.

TAKING SIDES
The old brown dog.
The old curly haired brown dog.
The old curly haired brown dog
Chases squirrels for no good reason.
The old curly haired brown dog
Never catches a squirrel;
But from our back window
We root for him, sense something
In his need to remember better times,
Closer chases, where perhaps even
Once or twice the squirrel was caught.
The old curly haired brown dog
Does not even finish the chase,
Each time turning back
To the soft and cool depression
He has made in the comfortable dirt
Behind an indifferent hedge.
If ever he caught a squirrel
We would root for the squirrel.
The once agile gray squirrel.
The once agile limp gray squirrel.
The once agile limp gray squirrel
Twisted into an upside-down U
In the old curly haired brown dog’s
Mouth, the red leaking out of him
And the spigots of his running
Turned shut. Our eyes
Accustomed to the chase but not the catch,
Our contrasting hearts might wonder where
Now does this quickness go?

~ Ken Poyner

~ Marydale Stewart

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40 and me
So I’m sitting there, just minding my business,
when this number comes sidling
all loose-jowled, yellow teeth, hairline receding,
in a polyester suit with unbuttoned shirt revealing
chest hair nestling gold chains gleaming
and says, “How ya doin’ sweetheart?”
“Just fine till you came along,” I reply.
He chuckle-cackles, says, “Tell me how ya feelin,’
gettin’ closer to the other side.”
“Don’t remind me,” I say. He puts up his hands like surrender.
“Hey sweetheart, take it easy. I ain’t here to take
your last confession, know what I’m sayin’?”
I nod, curious.
“I’m just here to give you a heads-up is all.
Time waits for no man, and all that.
So whachagonnadobout it, sister?” he says,
grabbing his lapels, making a check-out-the-merchandise face.
“Cuz I’ll be back. And next time I won’t be this handsome,
but I won’t be leavin’ alone.”
Ugh. I turn to the bartender, “another drink, please?”
and when I turn back he’s gone,
leaving just this number scrawled on a cocktail napkin.

~ Kim Baer

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WILLIAM C. CRAWFORD
Photography

119 Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Gallows
With fingers knotted in a noose
the old manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hand strangled the neck
of the paper bag, bottle shaped,
beside him on the bench.
No draught could swing a man
so high as the visions he could find
inside or dangle him so precipitously
over the edge of his life.
Running a shaking left finger
inside the deteriorating collar
of another dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shirt he attempted
to loosen the impending knot.
Slipping his hand inside the bag
he ran reverent fingers over the sweating
sides of the waiting sanctuary and touched
the blessed moisture to his lips.
Then shaking his head jerkily
to scatter the final fragments of his mind
he lifted his own right arm
and sought the salvation sliding down his throat.

~ Ruth Ann Allaire

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House of Cards
By Kyle Hemmings

Crouching like little children in a game of hide & seek, we entered the old
house, slowly. There was a muffled voice coming from upstairs, the light
slap of feet. We took the stairs with caution, our KK-Caligulas drawn. Our
gas masks gave off the impression of black pigs mismatched to thick human
trunks. Most of us were only golly-grunts on first tour of haze-duty. Sometimes we couldn't recognize each other. At the end of the far bedroom, an
old man lay on the floor, coiled into himself. We didn't check for signs of
radioactive burn. Then the singing from the bathroom. We knocked, yelled
out, "People's Army of the Free Roulette, Friend or Foe?" No answer. We
kicked down the door, pointed our Caligulas at the old woman taking a
sponge bath. She wore a joker's mask, the kind one might see in old Neo-realist films-- costume balls, lavish parties for the rich, the existentially dead.
She crossed her arms, covering her breasts. "If you'll excuse me, gentlemen,
I'd like to dry off & get dressed. Then, we can all go downstairs & have tea.
I'm sure this can all be sorted out without the need for further intrusion."
We obliged & closed the door. A few seconds later, the bathroom exploded,
sending some of us careening against the walls & our best Scopes-sniper
hurling out of a half-closed French window. We gathered ourselves & rose
from the floor. Giddy at being alive, we felt light as ghosts, playful as pigs.
Downstairs, we pretended to drink tea from empty cups, pinkies up.

121 Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

Ceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;sar Franck
His

2
by
h
Josep
er
l
h
e
u
B

Missed

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Symphony In D Minorâ&#x20AC;?:
you are lost,
scurrying about in a strange
(dark?)
forest for two full movements,
until finally escaping in the third,
bursting out into joyous
sunlight!
No other art form can
accomplish this:
weird, wild and finally
liberating;
you must wait for it, wait for it
to finally
gloriously detonate
more than once in this
marvelous and
wonderful
third.

they missed their
they missed their time
they missed their time for entry
into a flat black fast moving sun and
they missed fog and heavy brown sand
and a cold blowing wind from the north
with a high tide and a longed for shore
they missed their time of recall
they missed the slow soundless circling
of a dark speckled hawk
they missed the sound of a much traveled wave
as it slapped hard against the cold cement of a
jutting pier
they missed all of these possibilities until
the last one finally appeared before them
and then they missed that one also

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122

Ag Museum
It was the pork chop barbecue
that tipped the scale for me. Otherwise
I’d have stayed home—too hot and dry
to be outside this August Sunday.
We went in three cars, rendezvous’d
in the white dust of the gravel
behind the pre­fab metal building.
Plenty of people there, too,
ranged along the picnic tables
shaded under canvas, breeze­cooled.
One by one we finished lunch: chop in a bun,
mound of potato salad, helping of sweet brown
baked beans, best I’d had in a long time.
In the cavernous museum, a perspiring man
in a nineteenth century shirt, vest, and frock coat
told us he was John Deere, told us how
he’d made the first steel mold­board plow
and how he kept the business going
through its Grand Detour days and then
for the generations in Illinois and finally the world.
We all knew the story but it was good to hear it again,
a pleasant reminder of where we’d been.

After that, I walked around, inspected history
arranged, dusted, described on white cards
alongside mannequins resting after hard lives.
In alcoves were quilts, furnishings, stone crocks and churns.
Then the tools: walking plows, a grain drill, a corn sheller.
Then tractors: a brilliant green John Deere,
a restored Fordson, a rusted but dignified Oliver.
Last, in a room apart were the uniforms and guns,
the other side of this kind and hopeful past.
Faded tunics, belts, caps, insignia of command and courage,
sat stiffly upright on mute forms, shadowed and still.
From the quiet core of life, from the center
of these farmlands, from the cradle of the land itself,
the young men went to war. With new sets of tools
and new seasons to understand, they learned to kill.

~ Marydale Stewart

123

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Prayer of the Motorcycle
“I tell you,” he replied, “If the disciples keep

quiet, the stones will cry out” —Luke 19:40

Lord, cover my machined skeleton
with soft muscle rippling beneath skin.
Trade me an irregular beat
for the perfect timing in my finned chambers.
Powder­coated steel. Ninety­two octane.
I too am a collection of precious dirts plucked,
fashioned from the earth’s heartbox.
I need sweet air, fluids. Spark. A master.
Give me hunger beyond the bite into a curve’s pavement.
Lord, give me sight where I have a filament.
If I am their creation, I am yours,
so give me the freedom of a misfiring voice
and the tiny loping engines of cells
whose fuel is bread, meat.
Then let me ascend your highway
with the sputter of wings.
~ Jonathan Travelstead

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124

Edison Street Excavation
They couldn’t leave the farm behind
when they moved to our block
the whole unruly lot of them—
aunts uncles cousins
coming and going
coupling and uncoupling
and always clinging to them
the memory of the plow
It was a post-war suburb
square faceless brick
perfunctory lawns
but on an extra lot they grew
corn and beans and grapes
and built a shed
one side for chickens
the other for a mule
The youngest girl and I played forts
and fantasies in the brambles by the tracks
that traced their plot a daily train
clattering by at 5 o’clock
rousing the dogs
telling us day was running down
Still the hint of fields hovers somehow
in the air the almost smell of dry straw
faint scratch of chickens
bramble’s prickle
on a child’s remembered shin
~ Sally Zakariya

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Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

do not ask me how many stars
don’t ask me to count stars in the heavens:
when I look up at night, I see
a muddy void
and a dozen of the brighter points,
dimmed with tears.
this is a small town, but big enough;
big enough to veil infinity, big enough
to be a beacon
that turns dark and light alike to shadow.
I hear there are places, far from home,
where the eve is not charcoal,
but glitter, not smoke but afire.
so I hear, but hearsay is inadmissible.
night is tar- it’s hard and it’s dry;
night is ink gone grey with decay.
night is a beast that creeps and that trickles,
spreads slow round the day,
nibbling and scribbling
and swallowing it whole.
night is like winter,
like death and like cold.
who’d wonder that we close our doors to dusk,
set our false suns to burning,
and hide from falser darkness?

who’d wonder we fear and mistake
what we so long have tarnished?

~Madison Seaver

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On the Fringes
I do not pretend to be white,
and there are those who would quickly
disabuse me of such a pretense.
I do not pretend to be black,
my ancestral skin long ago
lightened to more acceptable hues.
But, my world view was formed by the
neighborhood children throwing rocks
at my grandfather, by their white
parents boycotting all of us
for welcoming dark-skinned guests, by
the black girls who beat me up at
camp because of my heritage.
My lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s journey takes me from
one state to another, never
staying long enough to plant roots.
While I may sometimes find myself
welcome for a bit among an
organization or small group,
at best I fit in awkwardly.
Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never belonged anywhere,
and I probably never will.
~ F.I. Goldhaber

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Family Traits
By Scott Decker

Tallness has always challenged
Deckers. Johannes DeDecker, government administrator for New
Amsterdam; descendant Isaac
Decker of Staten Island—oyster
boat captain on the Jersey side,
plying the Fresh Kills; his son
Richard Tyson Decker joining the
Eleventh New Jersey Volunteers,
guest of a Union hospital after Gettysburg; finally Bob Decker—my
father—first born to the streets of
Elizabeth, then a teenager finishing
high school while farming alone in
west Jersey, finally drafted for Korea. Each man standing five foot
five—although frequently claiming
five six.
War enveloped Europe—Nazis destroying mankind and our nation
stood up. Uncle Johnny Decker
joined the fight, leaving the city of
Elizabeth, New Jersey, finding his
place among the Eighth Air Force
and the crew of The Wild Hare, a
B-17 flying fortress carrying out
missions across Holland, France,
Poland and Germany, bombing
factories, air bases, and refineries;
flying during D-Day and in the Battle of the Bulge. Thirteen machine
gun placements—the ball turret
gun the smallest—defended The
Hare. Nicknamed “Suicide Seat,”
the ball turret descended from the
huge ship’s belly, tiny in size for
air drag reduction, requiring the
smallest and toughest of the crew
to man it—my Uncle, Sargent John
H. Decker.

Throughout 1943, after taking off
from the safety of Suffolk England,
six miles above the earth, Uncle
John would rotate the pexiglass
sphere until twin machine guns
pointed straight down and then
squeeze inside. He placed his feet
on steel rests—one for rotation,
the second for radio control with
the crew. He crouched into a fetal position and buckled the safety
belt tight before turning two locking hatch bolts overhead. Air supplied by tubes from oxygen bottles,
frost-bite a constant companion,
he sat with back and head against
the rear wall of his plastic bubble,
hips at the bottom, legs in mid-air.
His eyes leveled with the fifty-caliber barrels spanning the turret’s
width, nearing either side of his
neck. Cocking the guns by pulling wire cables, reaching around
ammo boxes stacked above, careful
not to disturb belts of brass bullets
lying at his elbows, he focused on
the gun sight hanging from above
and descending between his feet
as he scanned the air for thin, light
Messerschmitts and newer, heavier
Focke-Wulfs.
November came and with its eleventh day, mission number thirty-three.

This time, a substitute. Uncle
Johnny would sit out for a needed rest, a newer gunner taking
his seat. Over Munster, Germany, The Wild Hare released her
eight bombs and turned for England as Major Schnoor, the rising Luftwaffe Ace, powered his
Focke-Wulf upward. Flak hit
The Hare’s third engine, then
three more strikes. She dropped
from the protection of her squadron and into the path of Major
Schnoor. Twenty-millimeter cannons punched holes through her
aluminum skin as fires ignited explosions and parachutes opened
above Nazis in Holland.
Uncle Johnny returned to Elizabeth in 1945, surviving thrice
weekly missions over German-held Europe. As he aged, he
often seemed lost in thought, silent and preoccupied, never able
to stay warm—remembering the
numbness of cramped and frozen
joints as he crouched in the bubble, eight to ten hours a stretch,
wind blowing through, ice clogging oxygen masks, temperatures
reaching forty, even sixty below,
metal for a seat—wondering at
his luck escaping Major Schnoor’s
cannon-fire, unaware his feet
pedaled silently back and forth as
he spun the turret and radioed his
crew.

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129 Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

ADOLPH’S RETURN

By Timothy O’Leary

Adolph blinked awake in confusion. For a moment he assumed he’d gone blind, then realized he was in pitch black. The
air, fetid, almost too thick to breathe, with an odor so foul with
decay it made his stomach burn. He wheezed deeply, nostrils
coated sticky. He attempted to raise an arm but was unable to
move, his body somehow bound, which explained the deep ache
that pulsated his spine. Shaking his head, he discovered a heavy
chain encircling his neck, tethering him to something in the
darkness. This was not good.

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130

His last memory was the bunker. Eva had
easily succumbed to the cyanide capsule he’d
placed between her lips after kissing her goodbye, her complexion now the ivory hue of the
dead. Still, Adolph thought she looked beautiful, like a Gabriele Münter painting, her tiny
form compressed into the green velvet couch
he’d transported to their underground hideaway from The Berghof. He was more distressed about his beloved dog Blondi and her
two pups, their corpses carelessly shoved into a
corner in the next room after his aide had tested the suicide pills on the animals a day earlier.
It seemed a cruel end for such fine canines, but

the last thing Adoph wanted was to be writhing
in pain or shitting his pants from too low a dosage when the Russians broke through. He knew
what the barbarians would do if he was discovered alive. He remembered popping his capsule, chasing it with a swallow of brandy, then
placing the Walther into his mouth and pulling
the trigger for good measure. And then…..this.
It occurred to him that he might be buried
alive. Perhaps the gun had misfired, and he’d
collapsed into a coma from the cyanide, only to
awaken six feet under in a pine box.
Or did this indicate something more glorious? Could he be rising from the dead, somehow beating mankind’s most inevitable foe?
Of course, he’d sometimes pondered his own
immortality, given the god-like powers he possessed. He recalled standing on the terrace at
the Reich Chancellery, two hundred thousand
Germans below, arms raised in salute while
chanting his name in adoration. A man that
elicited such a response from the masses could
have unlimited potential.

His tongue, leathery and swollen, was caked
with what tasted like sour milk, but he was
unable to spit away the foulness. An hour or
two passed, and suddenly the darkness was
broken by the sound of a heavy door sliding, a
column of light stretching in front of him. He
was thrilled to discover he wasn’t underground,
but in a barn surrounded by small cattle stuffed
into tiny chutes, their heads chained to posts.
He squirmed hard, but because of the chain
around his neck he couldn’t lower his gaze to
see how we was restrained. What kind of mad
jail is this?
“Don’t struggle, Mein Führer, it just makes it
worse.”
Adolph traced the voice, but all he could see
was the cow facing him across the aisle. The
animal’s lips were vibrating a faint bray, but
somehow he could hear words from the beast.
“Did you speak?” What kind of world possessed talking cows?
“Ah, Mein Führer, you’ve once again lost
your memory, haven’t you,” the bovine said
sadly. “It’s me, Himmler.”
“Heinrich? Heinrich Himmler? How could
this be?” Adolph stared at the nodding animal.
“Yes, Mein Führer. As I have often explained to you, the two of us seem to be on a
perpetual journey together. This is one of
many stops we have made, and I suspect we
will make
many more.”
Adolph gasped. “But you…..you’re a cow?”
“Yes, this time we are cows. Or to be
more precise, veal.” Himmler’s sad cow-eyes
blinked. “Soon the man that entered the barn

131 Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

will be feeding us a particularly unappetizing
milk.”
“Veal?” Adolph jerked his head while raising
an arm. No, not an arm, a hooved leg.
“I think this is our third or fourth time returning as veal. I can’t keep track, and you seem to
completely lose memory from life-to-life,” the
cow said. “This is not one of my favorites, but far
preferable to some of the other’s we’ve lived. For
me the worst is reincarnating as a goose, force
fed to make foie gras. I detest the stuff.”
“I don’t understand,” Adolph said in panic.
“We reincarnate?”
“Yes, and we unfortunately rank very low on
the karmic scale. We’ve returned as pack mules,
factory chickens, occasionally sewer rats—that’s
really foul—sometimes foxes or rabbits to be
hunted. Often we’re small animals trapped in
laboratories where they do the most dreadful
things to us. And oh, I almost forgot about the
insects. Terrible to wake up as a spider or grub,
only to be eaten by a bird. The only compensation is that it’s a very short life. Probably best
you don’t remember.

“Adolph,” the cow said in exasperation.
“How often must we have this discussion?
Every time you wake up it’s the same question. Why? Why? I don’t know. Who can
understand such things? My biggest fear is
that our new lives might be just the beginning
or our own thousand year Reich.”
Adolph shook his head. “But Heinrich,
It’s….”
He was cut short as a man shoved a bucket of
milk into his snoot, strapping the container
snugly behind his ears. “Drink up buddy,”

he said cheerfully, “All you can eat. Get nice
and fat, my pretty little twenty-buck-a-pound
veal.”
~ Fin ~

Always animals? Never as humans?”
“Once, many lives ago, we were babies somewhere in Africa. But we quickly starved to death,
blanketed with flies in a muddy hut. Just dreadful. All in all, the animal lives are preferable.”
“Heinrich, I don’t understand. You and I…..
we’re extraordinary. Leaders of the master race.
How could this happen?”

Photo by A.E. Bayne

Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review Volume 3, Issue 1

132

Index of Artists
WILLIAM C. CRAWFORD is a photographer, writer, and social worker living in Winston-Salem, NC. He got
his start in photography as a combat photo journalist in Vietnam. His experiences there made him decidedly
anti-war and skeptical of US military & foreign policy. His photos from the Texas/New Mexico outback are
examples of his favorite photographic technique: forensic foraging.
BARBARA DEAL is a mixed media artist who participates in the tradition of Colonial Wymmin’s Textile Art.
She is interested in the meditation practices of Quakers, Buddhists and neuropsychologists.
JAY DURET is a San Francisco writer and illustrator. His work has appeared in dozens of print and online
journals. His first novel, Nine Digits, was published in 2014. Jay blogs at www.jayduret.com.
JAMES F. GAINES currently serves as president of Riverside Writers, the Fredericksburg chapter of the Virginia Writers Club. His poetry has recently appeared in El Portal, Virginia Literary Journal, and Voices on
the Wind. With his son John, he also writes science fiction and offers the blog gainesscifi@blogspot.com.
CONNIE SNYDER LESTER began painting in 2007 while living in Fredericksburg, VA. She is primarily
self-taught and has attended classes by Bill Harris (oils) and Eleanor Cox (watercolor). She works in acrylic,
oil, and watercolor. Lester lives in Ashland, VA with her husband Craig.
TAYLOR PALICINO is currently finishing up her undergrad degree at the College of William and Mary with
a major in Biology and a minor in Art and Art History. Her areas of study are very different from each other,
but she feel equally passionate about both and tries to devote time to each. Whether its painting, photography,
or lab work, she tries to put her utmost effort and love into these diverse interests to ensure that they flourish.
W. JACK SAVAGE is a retired broadcaster, educator and author of seven books, including Imagination: The
Art of W. Jack Savage. To date, more than fifty of Savage’s short stories and over four hundred of his paintings
and drawings have been published worldwide. Jack and his wife, Kathy, live in Monrovia, California.
TIM SNYDER’s photography cannot be limited to just one genre. His photo archives contain everything
from professional skateboarders to real estate photos to images that could only exist in the imagination. Tim’s
work can be found around Fredericksburg at places like FOODE, Amy’s Cafe, 2530 Espresso and in the homes
of many Fredericksburg locals. Tim strives to go the extra mile for angles and views not seen by the everyday
eye. Traveling and exploring keeps things fresh for him. He plans on taking life day by day and building his
portfolio as a professional real estate, portrait, wedding and event photographer.
Check out Tim’s work at www.TimSnyderPhoto.com Contact at timsnyder13@yahoo.com
JOHN M. WILLS is a retired FBI agent turned writer. He’s written ten books and more than 150 articles.
He’s also an amateur photographer who loves capturing family and nature with my lens. Most importantly,
he’s a husband, father, and grandfather. His latest novel, Healer, is available through Amazon.com .

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RUTH ANN ALLAIRE, Ph.D. is a retired college biology professor, who lives in Fredericksburg, VA. She is
active in writing, genealogy research and studying various healing modalities. Married to an Egyptian, she is
interested in studying cultural differences. She volunteers for Virginia Master Naturalists.
LYNDA ALLEN is in her joy when she is writing, sharing her stories and poems, spending time with her
loved ones, sitting beside the river with the birds, and following her creative inspiration. Lynda’s two published
collections of poetry, Illumine and Rest in the Knowing, share the insights and highs and lows of her spiritual
journey. Her latest book, The Rules of Creation, is nonfiction and is the culmination of eight years of personal
practice, deep listening and allowing the words to flow freely through her heart to the page.
therulesofcreation.com/
R.A. ALLEN’s poetry has appeared in the New York Quarterly, Night Train, The William & Mary Review,
RHINO, Gargoyle, Euphony, and elsewhere. He has one Pushcart nomination. He lives in Memphis. More at
poets.nyq.org/poet/raallen
SUE HYON BAE is an MFA candidate at Arizona State University and International Editor at Hayden’s Ferry Review. Her work appears in Four Chambers Press, Minetta Review, Please Hold Magazine, and
elsewhere.
KIM BAER is former news reporter and current freelance writer living in Fredericksburg with her husband
and two children.
DANNY P. BARBARE resides in the Carolinas. His poetry has recently appeared in the Antarctica Journal, London Journal of Fiction, as well as other online and print journals. He attended Greenville Technical College. His poetry has won The Jim Gitting’s Award. He has a Kindle e-book available through Amazon
titled Christmas Poems.
GARY BECK has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t
make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction
(Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press), Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk,
Civilized Ways (Winter Goose Publishing), Perceptions, Displays, Fault Lines and Tremors will be published
by Winter Goose Publishing, and Conditioned Response (Nazar Look). His novels include: Extreme Change
(Cogwheel Press) Acts of Defiance (Artema Press). Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing). His short story
collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). His original plays and translations of Moliere,
Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in
hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.
LANA BELLA has a diverse work of poetry and fiction anthologized, published and forthcoming with over
one hundred journals, including a chapbook with Crisis Chronicles Press (Spring 2016), Aurorean Poetry,
Chiron Review, Literary Orphans, Poetry Salzburg Review, elsewhere, and Featured Artist with Quail Bell
Magazine, among others. She divides her time between the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam,
where she is a wife of a talking-wonder novelist, and a mom of two far-too-clever-frolicsome imps.
www.facebook.com/niaallanpoe

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R. SEBASTIAN BENNETT has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. His work has appeared in In-

diana Review, Fiction International, Texas Review, George Washington Review, New World
Writing, Los Angeles Review, The Southwestern Review, Connecticut Review, and American
Book Review, among others. He was the founding editor of The Southern Anthology. Presently, he
teaches writing at Broward College in Florida.

CAROLINE BOCK is the author of two critically acclaimed young adult novels:LIE (St. Martin’s Press,
2011) and BEFORE MY EYES (St. Martin’s Press, 2014).Her flash fiction and poetry have been published or are forthcoming in Akashic Press, Gargoyle Magazine and its Defying Gravity Anthology, Fiction Southeast, 100 Word Story, Ploughshares, Prometheus, Vestal Review, and Zero
Dark-Thirty. She is also a contributor to The Washington Independent Review of Books and a
freelance bookseller for the independent bookstore Politics & Prose.
CLINT BREWER is a writer and communications professional living in a 108-year-old farmhouse in
Gladeville, Tennessee with his wife, three children and two dogs. As a journalist he covered politics and
government for 15 years, including two executions and one presidential race. His reporting and opinions
pieces have appeared in USA Today, The Tennessean, The Nashville Scene and the Atlanta Jour-

nal Constitution.

SHARANNA BROWN, who prefers to go by Rain, is a graduate of Alabama State University with a Masters in Creative Writing from The University of Alabama at Birmingham. The Flint, Michigan native is a
newlywed and works as an adjunct English Instructor at her Alma mater.
JOSEPH BUEHLER has published poetry in such journals as The Tower Journal, The Write Room,

Theodate, Common Ground Review, Two Cities Review, Indiana Voice Journal, Turk’s Head
Review, Bumble Jacket Miscellany, Unbroken and elsewhere. He lives with his wife Trish near a
small town between Atlanta and Athens Georgia.

YUAN CHANGMING is an eight-time Pushcart nominee and author of five chapbooks, and she is the
most widely published poetry author who speaks Mandarin but in writes English. Since mid-2005, he has
had poetry appearing in Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Threepenny Review and
1069 others across 36 countries. With a PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen
Qing Yuan in Vancouver.
ASHLEY CARPENTER was, until recently, a high school English teacher living in Fredericksburg, Virginia. She moved back to her home state of Pennsylvania to begin a freelancing career. She graduated in May
2015 with an MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University.
R.S. CHEVALLEY has been a creative writer since he was a teenager growing up in Houston, Texas and
Metairie, Louisiana. He is a network administrator for a cyber-security training company here in Fredericksburg where he lives with his wife, Ellen, and his eight cats and two dogs.
PATRICK MICHAEL CLARK is a writer and dramatist based in Richmond, Virginia. He is a peddler of
strange tales, affairs of honor, ghost stories, family curses, agony, ecstasy and general heartbreak.
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SUZANNE C. COLE is a a retired college instructor who enjoys being a wife, mother, and grandmother; traveling and hiking the world; and writing from a studio in the Texas Hill Country. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s had essays published in
Newsweek, the Houston Chronicle, the San Antonio Express-News, the Baltimore Sun, Personal
Journaling, and Front Porch Review , as well as many anthologies.
TOM CONWAY works as a 7th grade English teacher in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. He spends a lot of
time encouraging students to take their writing seriously and to look for an audience, while he carries around
a flash drive containing thousands of pages of journals, stories, poems, and other bits of flotsam that he has
never been published. He thought it time to get started.
SCOTT DECKER recently retired from the federal government and is working on a book which will describe
the forensics used during the eight-year investigation of the 2001 anthrax murders. Earlier this year, he and his
wife Terry, along with their rescued beagle mix, Bart, relocated from Stafford, Virginia to Las Vegas. He enjoys
history and the role his family has played in it over the years.
BRETT FOSTER is the author of two poetry collections, The Garbage Eater (Triquarterly Books/North
western UP, 2011) and Fall Run Road, which was awarded the Open Chapbook Prize. My writing has appeared in AGNI, Boston Review, IMAGE, Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Poetry Daily, Raritan, Seattle
Review, Southwest Review, and Yale Review.
JAMES F. GAINES currently serves as president of Riverside Writers, the Fredericksburg chapter of the Virginia Writers Club. His poetry has recently appeared in El Portal, Virginia Literary Journal, and Voices
on the Wind. With his son John, he also writes science fiction and offers the blog gainesscifi@blogspot.
com.
GARY GLAUBER is a poet, fiction writer, and teacher. His first collection, Small Consolations (Aldrich
Press) is now available on Amazon.com. A chapbook, Memory Marries Desire, will be available from Finishing Line Press in early 2016.
BILL GLOSE is a former paratrooper, Gulf War veteran, and author of the poetry collections Half a Man
(FutureCycle Press, 2013) and The Human Touch (San Francisco Bay Press, 2007). In 2011, he was named
the Daily Press Poet Laureate. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Narrative Magazine, Poet Lore, and Southern California Review.
F.I. GOLDHABERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poems, short stories, novelettes, essays, and reviews appear in paper, electronic, and
audio magazines, ezines, newspapers, calendars, and anthologies. In addition to paper, electronic, and audio
publications, F.I. shares her words at events in Portland, Seattle, Salem, Keizer and on the radio. She appeared
at venues such as Wordstock, Oregon Literary Review, galleries, coffee shops, bars, bookstores, libraries,
and community colleges. www.goldhaber.net/
MITCHELL GRABOIS has had over nine hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the

U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for work published in 2012, 2013, and 2014.
His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for
Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. He lives in Denver.

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ART HEIFETZ teaches ESL to refugees in Richmond, Va. He has had over 200 poems published in 13
countries. See polishedbrasspoems.com for more of his work.
KYLE HEMMINGS lives and works in New Jersey. He has been published in Your Impossible Voice,
Night Train, Toad, Matchbox and elsewhere. His latest ebook is Father Dunne’s School for Wayward Boys at amazon.com. He blogs at upatberggasse19.blogspot.com/
HALEY HENDERSHOT is a Fredericksburg native now living in Richmond, Virginia with her husband,
John. She received her MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts and currently teaches high school
English.
TOM HOLMES is the founding editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics, and in July 2014, he also
co-founded RomComPom: A Journal of Romantic Comedy Poetry. He is also author of seven collections of poetry, most recently The Cave, which won The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award
for 2013 and was released in 2014. His writings about wine, poetry book reviews, and poetry can be found at
his blog, The Line Break: http://thelinebreak.wordpress.com/.
JONATHAN HUNGER is a middle school Special Education teacher in Montgomery County, Maryland,
where he lives with his family. His work has appeared in the Politics & Prose District Lines Anthology
collection. He lives in Maryland with his family.
M.J. IUPPA lives on Red Rooster Farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Most recent poems, lyric essays and
fictions have appeared in the following journals: Poppy Road Review Black Poppy Review,Digging to the
Roots, 2015 Calendar, Ealain, Poetry Pacific Review, Grey Sparrow Press: Snow Jewel Anthology, 100
Word Story, Avocet, Eunoia Review, Festival Writer, Silver Birch Press: Where I Live Anthology,Turtle
Island Quarterly, Wild Quarterly, Boyne Berries Magazine (Ireland), The Lake, (U.K.), Punchnel’s, Camroc
Review, Tar River Poetry, Corvus Review, Clementine Poetry, Postcard Poetry & Prose, among others. She
is the Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College. You can follow her
musings on art, writing and sustainability on mjiuppa.blogspot.com.
SETH JANI resides in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven Circle Press (www.sevencirclepress.com). His
own work has appeared throughout the small press in such places as The Foundling Review, The Hamilton
Stone Review, Hawai`i Pacific Review, Gingerbread House and Gravel. More about him and his work can
be found at www.sethjani.com.
PEYCHO KANEV is the author of four poetry collections and two chapbooks, published in USA and Bulgaria.
He has won several European awards for his poetry and he’s nominated for the Pushcart Award and Best of
the Net. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, such as: Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review,
Front Porch Review, Hawaii Review, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Adirondack Review, Sierra
Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others.
CAM KURER lives on a small farm in southeastern Wisconsin. He earned his undergraduate degree in biology
and English from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. His poems have appeared lately in the Northern
Cardinal Review, Ancient Paths, Whirlwind Review, and others. He considers himself an emerging writer.

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W.F. LANTRY’s poetry collections are The Structure of Desire (Little Red Tree 2012), winner of a 2013 Nautilus Award in Poetry, The Language of Birds (Finishing Line 2011), and a forthcoming collection The Book of
Maps. A native of San Diego, he received his Maîtrise from L’Université de Nice, and PhD in Creative Writing
from University of Houston. Honors include the National Hackney Literary Award in Poetry, CutBank Patricia
Goedicke Prize, Crucible Editors’ Poetry Prize, Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize (Israel), and the Potomac Review and LaNelle Daniel Prizes. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Gulf Coast
and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others. He currently works in Washington, DC and is an associate fiction
editor at JMWW.
GERI LIPSHULTZ has an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, as well as Ph.D. from Ohio University. She currently has writing in The Toast, NonBinary Review, and in Helen Literary Journal, and she has
had work published in the New York Times, College English, Kalliope, Up, Do (Spider Road Press, ed. Patricia
Flaherty Pagan) and Black Warrior Review. Lipshultz has been anthologized in Cheryl and Eric Olsen’s Best
Books By the Be, Spuyten Duyvil’s The Wreckage of Reason II, and in Pearson’s Literature: Introduction to
Reading and Writing. She was awarded a Creative Artists in Public Service (CAPS) grant from New York State,
she won the fiction 2012 award from So to Speak: a feminist journal of language and art. Her one-woman show
was produced in New York City by Woodie King, Jr. Read her blogs online at wewantedtobewriters.com .
MARIA ELENA B. MAHLER’s work has been published in English and Spanish in Badlands, Solstice,
Saint Julian Press, Under the Radar (UK), the anthology Beyond the Lyric Moment (Tebot Bach 2014),
and others. Her first bilingual poetry collection, Sweeping Fossils (Glass Lyre Press), will be released in 2016.
She was a finalist for the 2011 San Francisco-based Primer Concurso de Poesía Latinoamericana en Español
and a finalist in the BorderSenses poetry competition in 2015. Recently, her work was selected for four Spanish anthologies, published by El Centro de Estudios Poéticos in Madrid, Spain. Maria Elena also co-authored
the non-fiction book The Heart of Health (Truth Publishing Co. 2011). She is the editor of the poetry anthology Woman in Metaphor (NHH Press 2013), a collection of 27 poets from around the world inspired by the
paintings of Stephen Linsteadt. Maria Elena was raised in the South of Chile. After graduating with a degree in
Communications, she lived and worked in Mexico and Canada, and currently resides in the Sonoran Desert of
Southern California.
STEPHEN MEAD A resident of New York, Stephen Mead is a published artist, writer, maker of short-collage
films and sound-collage downloads. If you are at all interested and get the time, Google Stephen Mead and the
genres of either writing, art, or both, for links to his multi-media work.
MARIA MILLS lives in Seattle, where she is a MFA candidate in poetry writing at the University of Washington. Her background in biology lends a scientific persuasion to her work, as does the natural beauty of the
Pacific Northwest. Maria’s writing has been published in Gonzaga Magazine and The Journal of Experimental Zoology.
TERESA MOHME is a retired navy veteran currently residing in the Fredericksburg area. She is the
self-published author of Nature Speaks Volumes To Those Who... a collection of poems, and A Daughter’s
Reflection on the Suicide of her Father, a collection of poems, writings, and narratives; both available for the
Kindle on Amazon, and in paperback through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-million websites.
BEN NARDOLILLI is a native of Virginia currently lives in New York City. His work has appeared in Perigee
Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, THEMA,
Pear Noir, The Minetta Review, and Yes Poetry. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to
publish a novel.

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JAMES NOLL is a certified bi-pedal locomocutionist. When he’s not doing that, he teaches High School
English, which mostly consists of telling students to turn off their cell-phones. He’s published three books, A
Knife in the Back, You Will Be Safe Here, and Burn All the Bodies. You can read his work at
www.jamesnoll.net

DAVID MORGAN O’CONNOR lives and writes and teaches in Albuquerque, where he is a first year MFA
student in fiction at UNM. He tries to write like everyday is his last.
TIMOTHY O’LEARY A refugee from the advertising world, Timothy O’Leary was a finalist for the Mississippi Review Prize and Washington Square Review fiction awards, and the Mark Twain Royal Nonesuch Humor
Award. His stories and essays have been published or are forthcoming in Lost River Review, Talking River,
Heater, Fabula Argentea, Mulberry Fork Review, Gravel, the anthologies And All Our Yesterdays (Darkhouse Books), Theatre B, and many others. His non-fiction book, Warriors, Workers, Whiners, & Weasels
(Xephor Press) was published in 2006. He received his MFA from Pacific University, and resides near Portland, OR. More information is available at www.timothyolearylit.com.
KEN POYNER has lately been seen in Analog, Cafe Irreal, The Journal of Microliteratuer, Blue Collar
Review, and many wonderful places. His latest book of bizarre short fiction, Constant Animals, is available
from his website, www.kpoyner.com, and from www.amazon.com. He is married to Karen Poyner, one of
the world’s premier power lifters, and holder of more than a dozen current world power lifting records. They
are the parents of four rescue cats and two senseless fish.
PEG ALFORD PURSELL is the author of the forthcoming book of flash stories, SHOW HER A FLOWER, A
BIRD, A SHADOW (ELJ Publications). Her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Permafrost,
the Journal of Compressed Arts, RHINO, the Los Angeles Review, among others, and shortlisted for the
Flannery O’Connor Award. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and curate Why There Are Words in Sausalito, a well-regarded literary reading series I founded five years ago. www.pegalfordpursell.com
KEVIN RABAS co-directs the creative writing program at Emporia State and co-edits Flint Hills Review.
He has six books: Bird’s Horn; Lisa’s Flying Electric Piano, a Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book
Award winner; Sonny Kenner’s Red Guitar, also a Nelson Poetry Book Award winner; Green Bike; Eliot’s
Violin; and Spider Face: stories.
MICHELLE SANDERS is a middle school English and Theatre Arts teacher who lives and works in Spotsylvania County. She has a BA in Theatre and English from the University of Mary Washington, with a concentration in creative writing. She enjoys joking with her students, baking muffins, and dancing around her apartment.
MADISON SEAVER is a recent graduate of the University of Mary Washington, and a longtime resident of
Fredericksburg. She has written the same poem about nighttime several times and is still not quite satisfied.
JUDITH SKILLMAN’s most recent book is House of Burnt Offerings, (Pleasure Boat Studio). Her work has
appeared in J Journal, The Southern Review, Tampa Review, Prairie Schooner, FIELD, The Iowa Review,
Poetry, and elsewhere. Her awards include a Eric Mathieu King Fund grant from the Academy of American
Poets. Currently she works on manuscript review: www.judithskillman.com
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MARYDALE STEWART is a retired English teacher and librarian. She received her Ph.D. at Northern
Illinois University and taught at NIU and community colleges. She has a chapbook, Inheritance (Puddin’head
Press, 2008), and a poetry collection, Let the Thunder In (Boxing Day Books, 2014). She has poems in a
number of literary magazines.
EMILY STRAUSS has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry, which she has written since college.
Over 300 of her poems appear in a wide variety of online venues and in anthologies in the U.S. and abroad.
The natural world is generally her framework; she also considers the stories of people and places around her
and personal histories. She is a semi-retired teacher living in California.
TIM SUERMONDT is the author of two full-length collections of poems: TRYING TO HELP THE ELEPHANT MAN DANCE (The Backwaters Press, 2007) and JUST BEAUTIFUL (New York Quarterly Books,
2010.) His third collection ELECTION NIGHT AND THE FIVE SATINS will be published early in 2016 by
Glass Lyre Press. He has poems published and forthcoming in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Blackbird, Bellevue Literary Review, PANK, North Dakota Quarterly, december
magazine, Plume Poetry Journal and StandMagazine (U.K.) among others. He lives in Cambridge (MA)
with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.
JONATHAN TRAVELSTEAD served in the Air Force National Guard for six years as a firefighter and
currently works as a full-time firefighter for the city of Murphysboro. Having finished his MFA at Southern
Illinois University of Carbondale, he now works on an old dirt-bike he hopes will one day get him to the salt
flats of Bolivia. He has published work in The Iowa Review, on Poetrydaily.com, and has work forthcoming
in The Crab Orchard Review, among others. His first collection How We Bury Our Dead (Cobalt/Thumbnail Press) was released in March, 2015.
GUINOTTE WISE wrote a book at his farm in Resume Speed, KS where he welds and writes. It won, got
published to not much acclaim. It’s on Amazon. He got the soffits fixed with the money. His publisher says his
next book, a thriller (Ruined Days) is coming in December 2015. A collection of short stories, Resume Speed,
is in edits and slated for 2016. His stories have appeared in numerous literary reviews including Atticus, The
MacGuffin, Prick of the Spindle and Best New Writers Anthology 2015. His wife has an honest job in the city
and drives 100 miles a day to keep it. Some work can be seen at www.wisesculpture.com/blog/

SALLY ZAKARIYA’s poems have appeared in Apeiron, Broadkill Review, Boston Literary Magazine,
Emerge, Third Wednesday, Evening Street Review, and elsewhere. She has won prizes from Poetry Virginia
and Virginia Writers Club. She is the author of Insectomania (2013) and Arithmetic and other verses (2011)
and editor of Joys of the Table, an anthology of poems about food. Zakariya blogs at
www.ButDoesItRhyme.com.